So yeah. I don’t know what you know about me or what you want to know about me if anything? My name’s obviously Salme, and I’m doing hard time in the messy bitch mines right now. My crime? Completely just absofuckinglutely subsumed any feelings, wants, or desires for the past seven years into playing a really specific role. Now it’s like everything is on fire all the time, and I have the luxury of being really public and open about it and I’ve been taking it. It’s mostly been working out?

You’re obviously not from this world, and you at least have met Jorule before. What’re you interested in? Baking, obviously. Heckling Jorule, which, I mean, usually I’m the one getting heckled but I get the impulse. Your have a friend whose advice you’re trying to take, yeah? What’s she like?

I’m learning how to weave on a floor loom now. I was raised by a weaver, but never learned beyond a really simple lap loom. I’m a bit dogshit at it. I’m good at embroidery and acrobatics and I can tell a pretty good story when I’m not caught in my own head. I’ve done most weird or unpleasant odd jobs you could probably imagine doing on a low technology world. My most time-consuming hobby is telling Jorule my problems, which indicates poor judgment on my part.

Anything else you’d like to know?

honestly for as much as i can look into things if i wanted to, i have been trying pretty hard not to. don’t tell jorule i said that. or do, i’m not your boss. there’s a lot i don’t know and i’d, always, rather hear things in someone’s own words. you send two people out to go check out the same thing and report back and you get two sometimes very different answers, right? and that’s useful information, it doesn’t mean either of them was wrong, just that they brought their own eyeballs to the party

hm. my friend is pretty amazing. i’ve met people like her before and i always look forward to meeting people like her again. i’m not. really a person that many people can call on their bullshit, i don’t think? and there’s a particular kind of person who’s really never afraid to do that. on which note, i suspect you and she would get along, lol

also come on you can’t possibly blame me for enjoying heckling jorule. especially if i’m fully correct about some things. some stuff i have to confirm with my own two eyes but lol, goddess. honestly worse people in the universe to tell your problems to though, all things considered

good on you to try to learn how to do something you struggled with, though. i think that’s important. it took me fucking forever to learn how to bake worth a damn. also took me forever to learn how to work leathers. still not great at that and it rankles tbh

which, ok. since we’re talking about the messy bitch mines

i have been doing my time for a long, long, long time. salme i think it might be a life sentence. i am not a person who is very good at not being the best at something. anything. all of the things. i don’t think that’s ever going to change? but there is a way to be chill with the kind of person you are deep down and then you’ll run into people who enjoy that person, that you are. even if you only know them for a little while, it’s proof that there are people out there toiling away in the messy bitch mines w/ you. cause like

heres the thing

were all in the messy bitch mines, all the time all the time

its all the messy bitch mines all the way down

thats what finally clicked for me

Yeah. Yeah! That’s … it exactly, right? Different people will notice different things, prioritize different things, mark different things as significant versus not. To use my own way of thinking about things, tell the story about themselves differently. It’s all true. It all means something. Anyway, thanks for not looking overmuch. I probably won’t tell Jorule.

Why aren’t you the kind of person people can call on their bullshit? What are you like when you aren’t on a BBS system calling people nerds? Obviously passionate. A perfectionist. You care, which I mean. Who here doesn’t? We’re lousy with people who care so much we almost bleed with it. I should know. I’m one of them.

Tell me more about your friend. I’d probably get along with her. Despite what the strands on the Linkpearl might imply, I’m pretty good at getting along with most people? But I’m more curious about your relationship. It sounds like you’re still working through a lot of things? Messy bitch mines all the way down, right?

Confirm with your own two eyes means we will meet you in person at some point? I understand if you can’t tell us much, but surely you can say “we will meet face to face at some point during this story?” How did you even end up a part of this anyway? Caught in a net too? Anyway, when we meet, how about we go 1-on-1 in a friendly Rite?

And I mean, yeah, I guess Jorule is pretty heckle-able, but I have roughly the same weaknesses. Something I am saying in the hopes that you will not take advantage of said weaknesses, since this was information freely and openly given.

So I’m guessing you’re someone who’s pretty good at most things they do? I’m not, really. That’s been a bit of a struggle for me. I have certain abilities and pieces of knowledge from a position I volunteered for, but before that I was never particularly talented at any one thing. Lying to people, I guess? But I think picking up something I struggle with is pretty inevitable, as I don’t find myself with an abundance of natural skill.

That sounds as if I’m down on myself, and that is a flaw I’m working on, but what I really mean is that my strengths lie along my ability to do. To ask, to learn, to practice. I’m very teachable, but I need to be taught. For a long time, weaving was a sore spot, because the person who was supposed to teach me died before they could. But also … we have so many stories on Almachadta, about good weavers who stay at home and wait. I never wanted to be that, so I almost … avoided learning. But now. It’s something to do, and it takes my whole body, and I’m trying to learn to weave gnosis. I’m hoping I’ll be able to make things for myself and for those who I love, eventually. And hey, I’m still going out and having adventures, seeing stars and moons and … well. It’s been … amazing.

Anyway, re: the messy bitch mines. What you said made me … realize that I was holding myself back. Or not. Hm.

I’m a performer. I’ve always been a performer. Even when I was a little girl, I’d perform just for my isovanhempi, whatever dumb little story I came up with. I’m good at playing roles—subtle ones, ones people don’t often notice I’m playing. I feel wrong-footed when I don’t have a role. Recently, I’ve been working on figuring out who I am without a role, and I generally like that person, but it’s. Even when I’m being myself, I’m being myself 120%. I’m being the best version, the kind that shines brightly, the kind the can work miracles with the right help. I’m still trying to figure out what it’s like being 80% of myself. I don’t like her very much but … there are people who love and accept her too. I’m really lucky.

And it seems like a lot of people are not in the messy bitch mines to the same extent, but. I don’t know. Maybe I just wear it more honestly.

I’ve never had people I could tell my problems to. Well. I had one person, but it was complicated. It is complicated, still. I love him, but. He wasn’t able to be exactly what I needed due to some very convoluted circumstances. Now I can be a messy bitch all the time, with so many people who support me?

I don’t know. Maybe it’s dumb to worry about people not liking me when I’m not working miracles or building bridges.

Uh. I guess. Is there anything you’d like to know about me? Again, I appreciate you haven’t looked so I’m offering here.

oh my goddess there are so many things to respond to here

thats not a criticism btw im just yowling

first off yeah i absolutely expect we’ll meet face to face and i’m 100% down to duel when we do. i goddamn love the rite, it’s great

second off, i cant promise i wont mess around with you ever and in fact i can pretty conclusively promise that i will, but you are not currently under suspicion of being in the running for universe’s #1 biggest idiot so i think youre pretty safe at this juncture

i’m not counting all the offs im gonna off, lying to people is a great talent. also wild guess but i bet you’re selling yourself short. most people do i think? like sure people aren’t as good as me but babe that leaves so much room for people to be excellent, you dont even know. although you admit in literally the next paragraph that it sounded like you were being down on yourself so i’m gonna put this down and then read everything you wrote rather than trying to respond point by point. catch you on the flip side

ok. yeah. i can, actually, relate to… mm. I’ve had a truly ludicrous amount of time to think about who i am and who i want to be and what parts of myself i like and don’t like. mostly what i have found out is that i get bored really easily and that i’m kind of a dick when i’m bored. so. like. thats not a monster you can kill. i can’t make a number go up to solve that problem through sheer force of will and stubbornness and banging my head against the problem you just have to fuckin. deal? at one second per second and it makes a bitch feel aimless in, i think, not the same way but one that’s in the same zip code possibly

keep on fighting the good fight though. never ever ever give up.

i dont think its dumb to -worry- about that though. i think if people don’t like you when you’re not being useful to them there’s nothing you can do about it other than to note that down as a matter for the historical record & factor it into yr dealings with them in the future but also that that happens way less often than you think it probably does.

you just gotta go for it!! and it sounds like you are. and that kicks ass. don’t stop

I don’t think it’s about being useful? It’s about. Most people have certain expectations about other people. It’s knowing how to play to those expectations to help them best be who they want to be, or accomplish what they want to accomplish. It’s about presenting the correct side of your self to someone so they can understand you as best as they’re able, because let’s be honest, most people aren’t going to put in the work to actually see you as a whole person.

The person I am when I’m not at 120% is. Needy. Scared. Insecure. That’s not about being useful, that’s about not subjecting people to an experience that objectively sucks, right?

ok. what expectations do you have about people that they should be worried about not living up to

although. that said. ‘to help them best be who they want to be’ is a real good thing to be, to someone and your friends are lucky to have you. it’s being held face down in a stagnant pool of white magic until it stops kicking and screaming but you want the people you love to be sharper and you want to be something that can sharpen them. thats a good thing to want imo.

but you can’t be that all of the time, and that’s not who you -are-. my friend isn’t my sounding board and my whetstone and my lamp 100% of the time. she’s her own person and it’s her being her own person that’s why i can always find her in a crowd no matter how big the crowd gets or how long it’s been since i saw her last.

and if people dont want to put in the work to see you as a whole person then sincerely fuck em if they cant take a joke.

that entire last sentence is bullshit just from what i’ve seen you post in the public threads here & up with it i will not put. who makes YOU sharper, salme? who holds you accountable to the brightest burning part of yourself? is anyone doing that for you? maybe someone should. because being that person isn’t “giving one hundred and ten percent” and whoever told you that should get fed to a brontosaurus

do they even have brontosaurus on your world

would fucking suck if they didnt

I … no. We don’t have brontosaurus. I don’t even know what they are? Hm.

think of the biggest baddest monster you know about and then make it a vegetarian

‘cause it’s fucked up if a bronto eats you. like. if a behemoth eats you that’s just what happens sometimes but if a bronto eats you it’s because someone knocked you out and put you in with the cabbage trough and the damn thing was too dumb to notice and crunch you go.

anyways consider feeding a motherfucker to a brontosaurus if necessary thats my point here

I try not to have expectations for other people because I have generally found those expectations to be easily disappointed. I try not to want things from other people because they will never be there when you stumble. It took getting abducted and mindwiped by the most socially awkward self-styled “god” in existence to meet someone where I’ve found that not to be true.

For my friends? I expect them to tell me the truth. I expect them to rely on me, if there’s something I can do for them. I expect them to trust me, and believe me when I tell them about myself. I expect them to rein me in if I misstep, or go too far, or cause harm I didn’t intend to harm.

Is that sharpening? No one told me I had to give so much. All of this is self-inflicted. But I wouldn’t have the things I have now, the things I treasure, if I hadn’t acted ceaselessly with my own volition.

holy shit

ok. i am not going to say “holy shit your world sucks then remind me never to go there” because i do not think it would be helpful to say that without self-mockingly quoting my own immediate response

but

i gotta say it

goddamn girl i thought i was hard boiled after this long in the messy bitch mines but i guess not and now here you come

anyways uh. fuck. i mean if thats the case i guess it explains a lot of things. i hope your new friends??? don’t??? suck ass? holy shit.

anyways the POINT i was trying to make

is that if you don’t have insanely high expectations of everyone around you, if the bar is so low it is buried in the basement concrete & the devil is limbo dancing w/ it, why and how are you so certain they all have insanely high expectations of you

my other point is that yes, you are making your friends sharper when you do that and they should be grateful to you for it

and it sort of feels like they are? so that’s a good sign. you deserve better than to be disappointed all of the time.

To be clear, I don’t think it was a function of Almachadta. I think it was a function of what I wanted from people which they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, provide. My plane is one where everyone is fed and housed and cared for; in many ways, it is paradise. There is no war and very little violence. Sometimes, though, people slip through the cracks. You cannot describe to me a world where that is not true; there are always cracks, and there are always people seemingly designed to slip through them.

To be additionally clear, since I became an adult, I have been holding people at a distance for. Well. Because I thought it was the right behavior for the role I was playing but. I had a very good reason for thinking I was going to die very young. It has felt like I have been sitting, prone, waiting for an axe or a sword to fall on my neck. I’m not sure how often I gave people a chance after that. That role I was playing—it was a heroic one. Carrying people’s stories forward in time, remembering past histories that had otherwise been forgotten. Sometimes, early on, people mistook the role I was playing for the person I actually was. If I was going to die (and, I had reason to think, that everyone on my plane was going to die very soon) and if people preferred the act, who was I to dissuade them?

The thing is you cannot simply sort people into inadequate and worthy. Sometimes someone loves you and it still isn’t enough, it isn’t what you need. Sometimes the only way to have anything at all is to want less. It sounds like you’re much older than I am, so maybe that sounds young and foolish. But that’s what I’ve learned.

And I don’t think my friends have high expectations of me. I’m not sure they often have any expectations of me whatsoever. I’ve been trying to prove that I can shoulder some expectations. They’ve seen me at my lowest, and sometimes I feel like they can only ever see me like that—vulnerable and sad and sacred. Or they’ve seen me at my … I wouldn’t say “best.” I am a lot when I am fully and completely myself, but it is at least a lot that entertains and inspires.

And I am. I have two partners. One of them is. An aspect of the same Spark that is Jorule, which is sort of how I ended up becoming friends with him. That’s Aurelius—you’ve seen him around. The other is Awoken, who still hasn’t chosen a name. And they. Aury especially seems to like me, even when I’m. Annoying or nosy or self-absorbed. Awa … we’re having some difficulties, because I keep accidentally hurting him by being worried he’s going to get hurt, but he’s much the same. It isn’t as grim as I made it sound. I think. Hm.

It’s hard for me to trust people. Not with my life (a life is so cheaply bought and sold) but with my heart. How many times does someone need to catch me when I fall before I trust that it will always be true? And how do I pay someone back for the impossible gift of them being there in the first place?

I keep thinking I need to be worth it, that at the very least I can shine so brightly that no one will regret having stood with me through so much.

Maybe it is about utility after all.

gonna tell you something i haven’t told anyone in a very very VERY long time, not even my friend

im pretty sure that you have enough context about what’s going on that if i say “the last person i was before this” it won’t totally make me sound insane? anyways. his story… didn’t get to finish. and it fucked with me pretty bad tbh? i wanted to be him, i wanted to embody him. and winter claimed that world early for reasons outside my control. i know that who i am right now owes a lot to who he was and who he could have been if he’d had more time.

and the thing about him was, and i remember this vividly, seared into my FUCKING soul like it happened to me myself in every way that matters, is that he was supposed to have been dead years ago. he was sick. real sick. he knew he was living with a ticking clock in his body. and it’s a cosmic fucking irony that, now, i have all the time in the goddamned Universe. but i know what it’s like to be waiting to die and trying to get one big swing in before the grim reaper does his special little fuckin doorbell ring.

and i also know what it’s like to temper your own expectations about what you will and won’t be able to achieve. i have had to learn that the extremely fucking hard way. so, no, i don’t think you sound young or foolish. i do, however, think you’re wrong and that you should grab the world by the scruff of the neck and demand what would make you happy out of it. you’re where you’re at because you’re climbing up a hill made out of dead moments you’re trampling underfoot! let them be dead. look to the future.

i also. know. what it’s like to not be able to let people in. and i want to be upfront with you that there are some things i will not talk about until… later, if at all. and i, may the goddess salvage me, actually like you enough to want to be extremely honest about that and say that i am very much hoping that that ‘later’ happens. so if i’m a cagey bitch at any point it’s– that’s not me trying to get one over on you or be strong on you or anything. there’s just shit its too hard to say right now.

but. all of that said. you keep talking about being ‘worth’ it like you’re something that can be bought with Lucre and, babe, that’s never true of anyone that lives and breathes

nobody is worthless

and it really does not seem to me like anyone regrets standing with you through what’s happened

so

maybe im wrong but im usually right

Yeah, AG, I know precisely what you mean when you say “the last person i was before this.” I don’t think I’ve ever been anyone other than Salme, so I don’t have any valuable observations about winter, really. I know it will happen one day. I know I want every moment, every word, to feel special and memorable. I wish your last self hadn’t had his story cut so short. When we meet, will you tell me the whole story? I’d like to remember it for you.

But. Knowing death is waiting is … the worst thing about it, looking back, is that I didn’t try to get one real big swing in or anything at all. I was going to play my role, and give, and give, and give, and then when it was time to die I was going to carve a tally mark on a wall (Almachadta dies in cycles, you see, and mine would have been the 217th), set the Mask that persists memories across cycles in its resting place, and walk into the fire alone. All that work, all that performing, all that hope made for others, and I would die as passively as a cow that had already had its brains stunned out. That was the best thing I could do with my life, I thought.

I still may have to die like that. I haven’t … I am not foolish. I am not dismissing the possibility. But I am trying to … accept the things I want, and to pursue them unselfconsciously. It’s given me two great loves, several amazing friends, someone who is … both a brother and part of my own heart too, and a whole clan. I know that. But I get in my own way often. Honestly, the Linkpearl has been a gift in some ways, because I can get some of my messy bitch shit out of the way semi-privately. Still, though. Hm.

I was telling this to Aurelius earlier, but. You know that we’re in a story, right? Of course you do. Well. I think I sometimes also have the power to … I’m a storyteller. I notice sometimes I can warp the story around me. And I’m worried in doing so I’ll obscure the brilliance of my friends, of my companions, and it’s very much their story too. It’s why I like knowing what role I’m supposed to play, I think. That’s why I’m sometimes concerned about … what I want. It used to be that I thought what I wanted was somehow wrong, rotten. Now I’m worried it’ll drown out everyone else. I’m so loud.

I can’t even figure out if that’s a different issue or the same one? Or, no. It’s about being myself. Always. Of course.

Sometimes I wish I had been another self just so I could get out of my head.

Thank you, by the way, for being upfront about what you will and will not say. I appreciate that a lot. I honestly appreciate you a lot, which I never thought I’d say, considering the initial impression.

oh, fuck

goddamn

i need a minute. i want to give– i have some thoughts about that– about what you said about warping the story around you, though

Hey. Take as long as you need. Obviously I spend a lot of time on my tomestone. I’ll be here.

ok now that I’ve had some time to process and put together my thoughts,

it feels like you keep worrying about being overshadowed by people, but you also worry about overshadowing people

and the thing you gotta realise is, there’s just one light in the world

and

it’s us

all of us

when you’re brilliant, there’s a brilliant light shining from you and the people you’re hanging out with, the same as what happens when any of them are brilliant

and you can’t bank your own fire for anyone else’s sake. ever. there’s nothing in the Universe that could make you owe someone that. if someone asked you to, you call yr local brontosaurus (and i don’t think anyone asked you to or told you that you had to but feeding yr own ass to a brontosaurus would be counterproductive in this context.)

if they want to shine, they can shine on their own just like you are and i bet a shiny Lucre that when they do you’ll have their back just like they’ve had yours

You know, despite the cynicism, I’m very good at loving people. Or. Individual people. The stranger, the more seemingly unlovable and difficult they are the easier it is for me. But I don’t come close to your ability to love the abstract idea of people as a matter of fact. The idea that there’s just one light in the world and it’s all of us—surely you’ve seen how awful people can be. You said earlier that no one’s worthless, and while I certainly would put myself at the bottom of the hierarchy of worthlessness, that’s a hole with a lot of shitty people filling it. It doesn’t mean you treat them differently—that’s the beauty of a role, you don’t have to evaluate people, there’s a formula for care—but I’m not sure I really can believe we’re all one beautiful, inherently valuable light?

Which. Light, that sound shitty. Something about talking with you brings out my cynicism. Maybe it’s because I know no one else will see this.

That also isn’t a commentary on my friends. I do think some people do shine. It just feels like a rarity, not a given.

And, like. If that’s true. If you’re right, why did it take this long for anyone to ever see me? Like. Hm.

Can I tell you a story? It’s my story, from before all of this.

im gonna shut up and not respond to that until i hear the story. you can always tell me a story, though. especially if it’s somewhere like here where i can get to it when i get to it and have time to respond

i dont think thats shitty of you though i just think it means you got hurt. its not shitty to have been hurt

anyways. story?

Okay. This story will come in several parts. You’re welcome to respond as I write them.

I first met the Sword-Saint of Almachadta when I was sixteen. That is a lie, but it is also the truth. I had seen him before, certainly. He had, perhaps, even taken notice of me. But I was sixteen when we met in the way that matters.

To describe him, to really give a sense of him, I need you first to imagine Almachadta. Imagine, if you will, that you hold a sphere in your hand. If you were imagining the Beast, I would tell you about the surface of the sphere, the people living among red rock and metal, the way you can see the land curve away from you if you look far enough into the distance. The fact that when you look up, you see stars glittering overhead, a band of moons, a feeling of infinity.

Now, imagine yourself inside that sphere. That is what Almachadta is like. It is green, every shade of green you could possibly imagine, and all of it touched by dappled light. It is not just green, though—Almachadta flourishes fiercely, blossoming with every fruit and flower you could hope to imagine. It is green, but everywhere you look there is a riot color waiting to greet you. If you look up, you would see the other side of the world, green and alive and distantly hazy, but between you and the far side of Almachadta sits Centrelight.

Have you ever sat beneath the light of the True Sun? Or, a sun, if any of your previous selves ever lived under a sun? I do not mean the sun of Mu, screaming, violent, injured thing, but a the light of a sun that could never hurt you, that loves and loves and loves and loves? The Centrelight of Almachadta is to the True Sun what a slice of lemon squeezed into a full glass of water is to a lemon. And yet it is beautiful and bright and warm. While the days grow dim and the seasons do too, it is never dark on Almachadta.

The Sword-Saint was like the Centrelight in that way—bright, constant, warm. He always had a hug and a laugh. Today his hair is fully silver, but then his curls were salt-and-pepper. His smile is bright, and he is always smiling. That is as true then as it was now. He wore every emotion on his face, his heart on his sleeve, and a story on his lips. There have been many, many Sword-Saints. He was the most well-loved of all of them.

The first time I met him, I hated him.

I have told this story before. I said I hated him a little. I said it was because I thought it was an act, and I hated the phoniness.

That is true.

But I hated him. I hated him with every slimy, roiling, rotten part of myself. I hated everyone back then. And yes, it was because I was hurt, but I still hated. I had been hurt and I wanted everyone else to be hurt too. I wanted it so badly I felt like I was haunted by it.

Because of the Rite, random acts of violence are not possible in this world. Maybe that saved me. I don’t know who I’d have ended up as if that had been an option. As it were. Hm. No, I’ll save that for my next section.

hey. thank you for telling me all of this. i don’t– everything i can think of to say feels flippant in a way that WOULDNT be funny or appropriate, or can wait until the end of the story, but i wanted to let you know that i read all of this and

i hated my friend the first time i met her. it took a long time for me to stop, honestly. and it wasn’t very rational on my part. im not saying its the same thing at all but i’m saying i think i get it. or at least something like it.

what did he do to change your mind?

ok ok no ignore that. tell the story. you’ll get there.

I’m completely fucking up my own pacing, but AG … I was doing some … I was reviewing my memories, so I could best tell this story to you and in the process I was doing some real hard labor in the messy bitch mines and … I got distracted, I couldn’t tell stories I just needed to think. I didn’t mean to not respond to this for so long. Shit. I hope you don’t think I was ignoring you.

I think I made a Breakthrough though. Shit’s wild.

hahahaha it’s fine. the one thing in the entire goddamned Universe i can promise you is that im not going anywhere

also, that sounds rad. love that for you. sometimes you just need to have a nice long think.

Right, but I didn’t want you to think I had lost interest, especially if you saw me casting replies elsewhere.

And yeah. I realized … when I was doing some of this memory-work that I’ve been spiraling over the same insecurities with both of my partners again and again and again, and. They’ve both sat with me through it, but seeing it all laid out together I realized that I kept doubting their love for me when it’s been so obvious, so present this entire time. I got irritated at myself, maybe a little frustrated, but not. I didn’t hate myself for it. It did make a lot of things click, though.

babe text is an asynchronous mechanism. and i know you’re not gonna leave a story unfinished, i dont need to have been looking up ya’lls ass with a flashlight to be 100% pure unadulterated certain about that

good. dont hate yourself. but its good that you can see that kind of thing about yourself. dont beat yourself up if you tread the same ground over and over again sometimes, either. frustration, though, i get it. goddess knows i get it :(

sometimes i feel like i go through the year and, oh, it’s pokiehlember, time to have THIS problem. welcome back old friend. oh now it’s gaeust, shift change in the messy bitch mines! and i’ve been at this for a long time. i’m glad you’ve got people willing to stand by your side even when you’re at your worst. it makes a world of difference, doesnt it?

Yeah treading the same ground sometimes is understandable. Not seeing the obvious and blazing pillar of the exact kind of love you’ve always wanted? A bit like “come on asshole.” I’m sure I’ll have moments.

… okay so I’m gonna level with you. Real tempted to see if “pokiehlember” or “gaeust” jog Jorule’s memory, but that feels a little shitty to do considering you’re cheering me on, so. Announcing it here to see how hard you do or don’t object to the prospect.

But yeah. I mean. These things are cycles, but sometimes you can break them. And yeah. It does make a world of difference.

lol go for it i bet itll be funny

Whelp that revealed jack shit, as you knew it would.

which is in fact funny as hell so i was right

Funny for you, maybe.

Anyway.

it WOULD BE if i read your DMs with him, which i dont, because im a civilised person

but just from that alone i know it was in fact real real funny so zero regrets

I hated everyone back then, because I was hurt. I got hurt young, and it made me weird and strange. I’d say broken, but weird and strange.

My parents named me ‘Salme.’ It means ‘poem’; it means ‘song’. They were traveling musicians, talented ones, and they wanted a child but they did not want to raise one. They left me in my home village with my grandparent, my father’s parent, whose name I still cannot recall and I don’t know why. I saw them now and then. I remember my mother’s skin was dark and her eyes were almost black, and that my father’s mouth looks a lot like mine. They gave me a lyre on one visit, one for a child, but I was not skilled at playing it. They taught me songs, but while I could remember the words I was no singer. They came less often. I was nine, the last time I saw them when I was a child.

But my isovanhempi was kind and patient. On Almachadta, we grow up in huge, riotous extended families. It is often people to whom you are related, but not always. But it was just my isovanhempi, my parents, and myself. My isovanhempi was a weaver, and so I sat with them, weaving. I helped them string their loom and wound the weft-thread onto shuttles and sometimes got to sit up high on the loom and manipulate the heddles when weaving complex patterns. I told them stories I dreamed up as we worked all day—of things I had seen, or wished to see; adventures someone, somewhere, was doubtlessly having. They loved it.

I was ten when my isovanhempi died and eleven by the time we buried them. The village headwoman handled the practical considerations. I picked the readings, the songs, the stories for the funeral. My parents did not attend.

And after that? On Almachadta no one goes hungry or unhoused. That does not mean that no one goes unloved. My parents said they would come for me—next month, or a few months from now. Once the dim season ended, no, wait, at the turn of the year. I was passed from family to family and I turned twelve, then thirteen.

The thing is, I knew. My parents had wanted a child but they hadn’t wanted to raise one, and then when the child they did have had turned out to have none of the talent they hoped for, they did not want to take on the work of ferrying it about the land. Even as I practiced the lyre as I waited, I knew. And so instead I tried to be good. I hoped that perhaps if I was good, if I was right, that one of the families I had been placed with would want me. I learned their trades and their stories. I did everything they asked. It didn’t matter. The last one was—a triad with no children who desperately wanted children. But I was too old. They wanted a baby.

So I left my village, and no one bothered to follow. I went to the Courtyard, where the Palimpsest-King of Almachadta guides the world. There were a lot of children there. It isn’t uncommon for children to wander away from their homes at that age or a little older. We were fed and we were clothed and we had a place to stay and absolutely no one noticed that I had no place to return to. Or perhaps they did and simply did not care. Indeed, no one noticed much about me at all.

And that is when, I think, I started to hate them. Hate everyone. And from that hate, I started to take. First small things, but I never got caught. Then larger ones. Most people have something precious to them—something that matters for the memory it carries, not for any other kind of value. I would steal things like that, spend time with it, try to understand why it mattered. And then I’d often give it back, sometimes returning it from whence I’d taken it, occasionally pretending to be the one who’d found it.

Do you have any idea how sour stolen gratitude tastes? I still ate it up. Sometimes I even thought it would matter, that that connection would lead to a deeper one. It never did.

And so I stayed in the Courtyard, and I stole things I never kept, and I learned how to butcher animals, make parchment, till fields. I lurked in the inns where performers stayed and learned sleight of hand, acrobatics, and every story anyone ever told. And all the while, I hated and hated and hated.

And then I met the Sword-Saint.

The Sword-Saint wears a Mask—bone-white wood, carved of a wood that doesn’t seem quite like any other kind of wood you could find on Almachadta. No one but other Sword-Saints know the truth of the Mask, but everyone knows what it means. It means special. It means history. It means Almachadta itself. If there is a single item more precious on all of Almachadta, I did not know of it then, and I do not know of it now.

And, you cannot possibly know this, but: there is a blind alley in the Courtyard that the Sword-Saint used to take in cutting away from his duties for a moment to patronize his favorite meat pie stand. He would slip away, almost guilty, and shove the whole thing in his mouth in three or four bites.

And, you can also not possibly know this, but I am not a large woman, and I was smaller then, and dark. It was not so hard to hide there and wait. To slip my hand out and snatch the Mask from the satchel at his waist.

He took one step, two. On the third, he touched his belt, and his entire body went tense. He turned, and there I was, at the mouth of the alley, Mask in hand. I had it held to my face, taunting him. The most precious thing in all Almachadta, and the the most important figure second to the Palimpsest-King himself. I had never seen the Sword-Saint terrified before, but in that moment I saw abject terror, the kind that shuts your body down. The kind that wipes away all thought except for of itself. Fear, in its most primal, basic form.

No one but other Sword-Saints know the truth of the Mask, but in that moment I knew that there was a truth, and that it was terrible, and that the thing I held in my head was precious beyond all reckoning, but also a burden beyond all reckoning as well. And so I decided to tell the Sword-Saint of Almachadta, the story-keeper of all the world, a story about himself. It went like this:

“There was a Sword-Saint marked by the Sunbeam-and-Dog, and he wore the Mask and made people laugh and laugh and laugh, all the while carrying a terrible, terrible secret with him. And this secret was so unspeakably awful that he’d never told another soul. It was a secret held by each Sword-Saint, and whoever wore the Mask would learn it, and it would hurt them, but they’d do the job anyway and the secret was…”

And then I pulled the Mask away from my face, and I told him, “I’ve no fucking clue,” because I didn’t. And that was when the fear left him and he breathed again.

He was fast, faster than I could hope to be, and he reached for me and I thought his hands were reaching for the Mask but they were reaching for my shoulders instead, and he pulled me into a hug and called me trouble and, yes, did swiftly take the Mask back but. It was concern for me that had so terrified him. He saw me.

And that is the first time I loved the Sword-Saint of Almachadta.

There are rumors that each Sword-Saint has a premonition of their own successor. I am not sure how true that is. I do know that after this there lay an assumption between us, unspoken, that I would be his successor. I dogged his steps and demanded story after story after story and I told him stories of my own—true ones, and well-spun lies, and everything that is both at once or somewhere in-between the two. And he challenged me to tell more elaborate stories, taught me tricks to keep the audience’s eyes on me, introduced me to storytellers who came to the Courtyard that he’d learned from as well. We dueled until I could beat anyone in the Courtyard other than him. He taught me how to read and then to write when no one had ever before noticed I couldn’t. He sharpened me to a gleaming edge.

I would have done anything, anything for him.

But the one thing he needed most was freedom from the terrible secret of the Mask. He did not tell me what it was, but he did tell me that it weighed on him, that he would not wish it on anyone else, that it had destroyed Sword-Saints before him. He did not say that the role of the Sword-Saint is a curse, because the role of the Sword-Saint is a gift. But it was a curse to him.

I did not duel Badri to simply relieve him of his burden. I knew I could bear whatever truth lurked within the Mask. I wanted feel like I belonged in Almachadta, when I had always felt like I did not fit. I loved stories, performing, being seen. I was curious; I have always been curious. All of those are true.

But I also wanted to relieve him of his burden, and beyond that, I wanted to be important to him. I could think of no better way to accomplish both. When I won the Rite, he cried.

I was 18 when I became the Sword-Saint of Almachadta.

Here is the first thing you learn when you wear the Mask: That Almachadta always ends. Here is the second: There is no is no stopping this fate. And the third: It is always reborn.

The Sword-Saint carries memories forward through these cycles. The Sword-Saint bears this truth alone so no one else must live with despair. I have sometimes, during the course of this journey, wondered why there is so much sadness in my history; everyone else seems to have had some kind of joy. But I do not think I could have done my job half so well if I had learned this truth after knowing such joy. As it were, I was glad it was me and no one else. I was glad Badri could rest.

However.

He built a family once he was free of the Mask—unwanted children across Almachadta. He lives in a big, loud house and is surrounded by children who love him and whenever I go to visit him it feels like home, but it is not my home. It was never my home.

And I love him, I do, and I know it was only my becoming the Sword-Saint that allowed him to build his family. I know he loves me with all his heart and I love him. He is my … father, insomuch as I have any family at all. But, AG. Part of me. Part of me still …

If everyone is beautiful and inherently valuable, if we all shine, why did no one ever see that? Why did I have to take on the Mask to build anything at all?

Because the thing is … the Mask does not know, cannot know, when Almachadta’s wheel will turn, but when I first became the Sword-Saint, I spent weeks diving in the Mask, looking for patterns, truths, stories, trying best to understand the role I needed to play and building it from the ground up. But one of the other things I was looking for was a sense of time.

How long did any given cycle take before the world devoured itself?

And I knew by instinct before I knew for certain that I would be the last Sword-Saint of this cycle, but once I had laid out all the evidence and knew this world was very, very old, I was faced with the reality that it would be me, alone, at the end of all things.

And something broke in me that I did not realize until recently was broken at all, but I lost all volition. I became a passive thing, waiting to die. I performed the role admirably, with everything I had—it did become everything I had. And I will not say it didn’t matter. It mattered very much. I will not insult myself and say I was a poor Sword-Saint. I was not Centrelight-sunbeam Sword-Saint, but gleamed like I distant star. I am very good at what I do.

But I lost myself in being the Sword-Saint and I forgot, entirely, to be Salme.

I thought I had grown past that. Since we’ve begun this journey I have … worked through many things. Grown. Flourished, even. I’ve rediscovered myself and … become more myself than I could have ever hoped to be.

But I don’t know what to do with the fact that everyone I meet seems to love me now. And now is what matters. The future is more important than the past, but I just.

Where was any of this when I needed it most?

And why can’t I forgive Badri for something that was not his fault, was no one’s fault? I don’t even regret being the Sword-Saint. I just resent that … it is so simple for him and his children, and it is so complicated for me.

He sent me a message recently. I haven’t been able to bring myself to respond.

goddamn, salme

i’ve been sitting here thinking about what to say that wont sound dismissive on accident so lets start with: thank you for sharing this story with me, it means a lot to me that you did. and some day, if i feel like i can, i’d like to tell you my story too.

hard confirms that i think we always would have gotten along, though. that ‘ive no fucking clue’ killed me.

it’s hard for me to imagine having the mask and giving it up. putting that burden on someone else a second later than you absolutely had to. i think i would have died rather than lose that rite tbh. it’s hard for me to relate to someone who thought that was okay, but i dont want to be a vicious bitch about your dad and i dont think thats what you need rn but i am kinda judging him and i think it’s fine if you judge him too. just make sure to split out judging HIM and judging your whole world for fucking you over

18 years is not a lot of years in which to decide that nobody was ever going to think you were worth anything until you took on an insane suicidal burden for your culture. the entire situation with the mask sounds fucked as hell. putting all of THAT on… goddess knows how many just. normal-assed people? over and over again? i guess it was the only option available over there. you’re real good at what you do but what you do is ‘professionally fucked by your entire planet’ and i think that’s. gonna? be hard? to fucken deal with.

but again

and i wasn’t there and dont know what happened and i know this is gonna sound insensitive or like im saying you suck, and that absolutely isnt what i mean

but it took me like. actual centuries. to stop constantly fucking up basic shit. and im cool as a cucumber now! went from mad sucking to being the fucken best and nobody has any idea it was ever the other way (except you. hope you feel lucky). people around here are usually just -starting- to really properly learn a trade or train with weapons and find their people when they’re that old. you had shit parents and you fell through the cracks and that fucking sucks and you didnt deserve it but im pretty sure that everyone would have wound up thinking youre rad as fuck by about this point even if you hadnt been the sword saint

sometimes you’re broke as shit and you need just one lucre

and then years later you’re fuckin rolling in it. rolling around in giant piles of lucre with your paws in the air

and you think back to that one real shit day when you were broke as shit and go, fuck damn it, if only

and that day still matters or else it wouldn’t keep biting at your heels

but there’s nothin you can do about it!! you just gotta steamroll ahead!! roll around in your pile of lucre.

the lucre in this metaphor is hot guys i guess

I’d love to hear your story, AG.

Badri didn’t have a choice, is the thing. I won the Rite, clearly and unambiguously. To set the stakes at—what, that he would die if I won? That would violate every precept of the Mask and the role of the Sword-Saint and the passing on of the Mask. And he made sure I knew, insomuch as anyone could know, what I was signing up for. It is far, far more than he got.

He was younger than me, and he did not know. He. The Sword-Saint before him … didn’t die, they’re still alive, somehow, but. It seemed like they were dead, and Badri was the only choice. Of course, aside from Badri I couldn’t say how old the Sword-Saints usually are when they take on the Mask? I’m … one thing I’m working on is finding the stories of the Sword-Saints, not just … information about Almachadta. But the farther away from your current moment in the Mask, the murkier the memories become.

It’s been odd because I’ve realized that. I am more fucked up about the whole thing than I thought I was. I used to feel. Not superior, but like. I had been made for the role in a way that Badri wasn’t, that many other Sword-Saints weren’t. I loved the stories, I loved performing, and I suppose I didn’t mind holding everyone at a distance. It seemed to work out better than holding anyone close.

But I’m. Way less okay than I thought I was. I don’t. React normally to things. I struggle to. Know what to do without a well-defined role. I’ve at least stopped having nightmares about the end of all things? But it seems. Exhausting. To ask people to keep dealing with me being upset about this.

And I feel weak, I think. In some ways, it was easier being a useful thing. I hadn’t realized. How much of myself has gotten eaten away. Anyway.

Thank you for listening, and your kind words. And … I mean, I love my partners, but the lucre in this metaphor is … I think love? I mean, I have two boyfriends but I do only have two boyfriends (everyone keeps acting like … Jorule called me a “harem protagonist”?)

Though when you said, “but it took me like. actual centuries. to stop constantly fucking up basic shit.” Have you been in this world for actual centuries, or was this before?

… AG what did you say to Badri?

i just told him he was a chode i dont intend to elaborate

sometimes i do impulsive bullshit but i can rein it in

if i ever meet the guy face to face im beating his ass in a rite though

ill let you choose what the stakes are if you want

i think i get what you mean, though. it sounds like you are watched pretty intently by the duelists mask (the stars, i mean, not the. the thing you got) and the duelists mask is a motherfucker. i mean all the stars are motherfuckers but the duelists mask is like extra large motherfucker with motherfucker sprinkles imo. ran away from that ones attention on purpose tbh as soon as i realised it was like, uwu, whats this

you’ll find yourself. itll take a lot of whetstones and time. but your friends sound like they sharpen you too

anyways im sorry if i caused a problem by randomly being a dick to badri i’ll let the thread drop

shit

ill even fuckin apologise to him if you want me to

Hey. No. You don’t have to apologize. You can call him a … what’s a chode?

Anyway I just didn’t want him to know I had Complicate Feelings until I knew how to talk about my Complicated Feelings.

I’m going to stay off my tomestone for a bit and I have some more thoughts especially about constellations but I didn’t want to leave you feeling like you’d fucked anything up because you didn’t.

a donger

a tallywhacker

a one eyed yogurt slinger

a diiiiiiick

anyways his immediate reaction was to ask if i was one of your friends in a way that. sounded like he was glad you made a friend he didnt even know about

even if that friend steamed in calling him a chode

i can see why this guy irritated the piss out of you

and also why you love him tbh

anyway thank you, i appreciate it, im probably going to apologise to him anyway but it wont be because i feel like i gotta. goddessspeed i hope you get some rest or something

What constellation did you end up watched by? Sundered Wolf would be my guess, I think. You give “able to break unbreakable things but kind of fucked up about it” I think. Anyway yeah, I’m watched by the Duelist’s Mask. All Sword-Saints are. There’s a whole secret about it I’ll tell you if you ask.

Haha, Badri just being happy I have friends does seem … hm. When I went deep into the role … he missed me, I think? Who I was before. He was the only one who could really bring it out.

He’ll probably really like you if he gets to know you, but I don’t if he’s ever met someone he disliked.

close!!! soldier and brother baybeeee

unwinnable causes, sure, but im not desperate about it. and everything i break… is breakable… you can tell b/c i broke it!!!

I’m not … disappointed in who you turned out to be? If that was a concern. I’m grateful we got to meet.

Uh. I hope I wasn’t disappointing when we met. I’m glad you had fun. Can’t believe the friend you hated at first was Zaya.

im glad youre not!

you werent disappointing at all. that was amazing.

im sorry i got weird and stalked off at the end. ive got some shit i have to sort out in my own head.

It’s … okay? I think? I mean. I really wanted to talk to you? So I guess I was a little disappointed about that, but I think it would’ve been a little weird in front of the others, actually. Since we’ve told each other a fair amount? And I want them to get a chance to get to know you organically.

Or. Well.

So how much do you know about … Annarr and Aurelius and Jorule and that situation? Did you know I thought … you had hurt him (your pick of which aspect of him that is) and for a long time I really wanted to kill you for it? I mean, I know I couldn’t have probably, but I wanted to? But he explained it wasn’t … your fault. When we first got here, Zaya threw everyone for a loop by knowing Aurelius was someone completely new. Was that you?

Anyway, take your time. I’m glad the Rite was fun. I’m not … talented in the same way my companions are. But you see how they shine, right?

we’ll definitely make time to talk. i imagine you’re going to be here for a while? i hope so, anyways. there’s lots to see. i think you’ll enjoy yourself.

when i said i didnt read the logs i meant it. that said, the hairs on the back of my neck specifically dedicated to knowing when jorule is up to some bullshit have been standing on end for a while. needed to actually see aurelius with my eyes to be totally confident that what was actually happening was actually happening, though.

honestly most people who i like at this point started off wanting me dead so you’re in real good company. i tend to provoke that in people.

i was an idiot and ran my mouth and zaya is too clever and used to me for her own good, and got answers out of me about what was going on. thought it’d be easier for her to know what happened before she saw his body walking around with someone else inside it. gave her time to not be shocked by it. to think of aurelius as someone she could be friends with too. would do it again tbh

also dont give me that

wolf did me a favor

you were scary as hell

i know what you had in your back pocket and were about to cast on me

also you told me yourself that the sword-saint is a dueling master. i know youve got a loadout that you pull out for special occasions but that, with this group, you prefer to back them up and -make- them shine. but if you do that, their shining is also your shining. thats what being a clan means

thats why i like it here.

It’ll depend. We’ve been. Hm. How much have you actually figured out about what we’re trying to do, and why we’re here? Though maybe that is a question better answered with the whole group.

Wait are you telling me you have some weird-ass fucking Scorpion Sense for Jorule shenanigans in particular? Like is that a thing you have Developed? Is this like. A trauma response or …?

And I mean after the initial shock, I think … Aurelius and Zaya both expressed some degree of gratitude that it happened like that? I know it made things easier on Aurelius, and I think Zaya being able to meet him as he is and not who he felt he should have been was important. So I’m glad you’d do it again. That was the right choice.

I ALMOST CAST IT THAT FIRST TURN. I almost did. But when you hit me and called me babe I thought it was you and I felt conflicted about. I didn’t know. If it would reveal something you weren’t ready for me to know.

And then I was more sure it was you and I decided to cast it on you anyway so.

And I think “dueling master” is a significant stretch, but I agree about making other people shine.

I’m glad you like it here. I’ve liked it here too, thus far. You said you’ve had a lot of time. How long? Do you … hm. How far back in time do your memories stretch? How long have you been the Scorpion Queen?

And would you prefer I called you Jae or SQ or AG or what? I’d like to have a name for you but … I don’t know. You said Jae was fine, but I also wanted you to have that choice.

honestly? ive been trying pretty hard to let you guys do your own thing without paying super close attention to it. i know you’re here looking for V because if a bunch of weird cool motherfuckers show up from the other planes theyre gonna want to talk to the OTHER weird cool motherfuckers who showed up from the other planes. im just good at reading people and seeing where things are going

dont YOU have jorule sensing hairs on the back of your neck. i bet you do. if you dont youll grow them soon

i’m glad to know it made things easier on aurelius. i hoped it wouldn’t make what hes dealing with even harder. i was actually kinda worried? but not worried enough to not yap i guess so im glad it worked out.

honestly? i AM a little bit terrified of libra. there are things im not ready to talk about yet and i know how that rite-tone works here and what cosmic bullshit its resonating with. as you may have guessed not a lot of shit scares me but that spell scares me lol. do with THAT what you will. doesnt scare me enough that i’d turn down a rematch if you guys think you can beat me

also “jae” is fine. i’m not YOUR queen unless you swore fealty to me and you dont seem like the fealty swearing type and angelsGuignol is a stupid name for stupid bulletin board systems jorule hacks together with baling wire and a prayer. people might look at you like you’re insane if you refer to me that way though so have fun with that

Hm. I’ll put my serious stuff in a separate post and you can read it and respond to it or just ignore it. Sound fair?

Honestly Jorule’s … hm. Been going out of his way to be support, I think? He’s. Well. It’s very weird to love two aspects of a Spark at the same time in different ways, but never let it be said I don’t enjoy a challenge.

Do you feel guilty about Annarr? I don’t think you need to. Aurelius doesn’t think it was the Truth That Burns and he’d have thought about it enough to know. I’d encourage you to get to know him like I encouraged Zaya to, but man I’m not sure what your relationship with Annarr was like beforehand. Aurelius is. Amazing though. I am sorry you lost a (whatever). I can’t be sorry he exists, even if I want to respect Annarr’s memory.

As for Libra. Hm. I feel very strongly about casting it on my friends (that’s you) without their consent. I also want to know and I am not patient. I also think it might be information we need. What I can tell you is I won’t pressure you to talk about anything I learn until you’re ready?

Also Jae it is. And I’m not bothered if people look at me like I’m insane. I mean. Look at my life.

im not the one who yoinked annarr out of the world for whatever weird sick fucked up reason it happened. i gave him the order to go investigate weird shit that was happening and he’s not the first good hunter i sent to their death and im sure he wont be the last. it just happens sometimes. some part of him lives on pretty directly, thats more than most people get.

i feel angry. but not guilty

unless you mean when i beat him in our rite in which case i dont really feel guilty, it’s definitely what provoked me to come up with a better in case of emergency break glass option though. he was still mostly fine after that. i guess it just made him ultra susceptible to weird stupid horseshit. couldnt have known thatd happen

and, you’re exactly right. aurelius gets to exist now. and he seems rad as fuck.

as for libra…

i cant NOT encourage you to hit me with your best shot next time we’re in a rite. and if you dont do it, luĉja will. fuckers merciless. i guess i’d rather it be you

I’m glad you … hm. You’re carrying a lot of responsibility, aren’t you? [Heavy is the Crown], huh?

Incidentally, I, along with Wolf, had been sent on a mission to investigate what was going on with Almachadta when we were taken. Well. We knew what was happening. Almachadta was dying. Wolf heard it in the Worldsong. And I knew it was inevitable. We were going to … there are gates between the worlds. We were going to investigate that. To see if we could. I don’t know. Stop it? (I didn’t think we could stop it).

That’s when we were taken. I’d guess … Annarr got close to the gates? I’m guessing Luĉja did too. But that’s a guess.

Oh. You gave me the strength to talk to Badri. I’m still. Working through some of the things he said. I might toss them at you actually.

Also I said I want to talk but also I want to hang out. I’m not going to propose a Rite between you and me but think of something else you like and we’re doing it. Sound good, Jae?

Some wild swings about serious shit:

The Beast is dying. You know she is but you don’t know why. You’re not dying with it, or maybe you are and it terrifies you. You can’t do anything about it and it’s been chewing through you. That’s why you flipped when I talked about waiting for Almachadta to die.

We’re here to stop that if we can. To save them all: Almachadta, Samudra, The Beast. Valaïs and Mu, if the situation is the same.

You can do so much, but there’s something you can’t do and you hate it. You’ve been asked to bear so much, but you don’t have to bear it alone.

We’re friends, yeah? I’m here for you.

And if not me then please confide in Zaya. She loves you so much it awes me. Your lamp and your whetsone and your sounding board, yeah? Let her be those things and more.

want to help me bake some stupidly complicated braided loaf we make for special celebrations? “what are we celebrating” weird nerds showing up thats what.

i think you’re probably right, about annarr and luĉja getting near the gates. couldnt figure out exactly what happened myself. went out nosing around where they vanished, myself, against zaya’s better judgement, and nothing happened but there was a weird smell in the air. like stale ass but magic. stale magic ass. dont know what the deal was.

glad you could talk to badri. hope that goes well for you. if hes worth a damn he’ll be fine with you having big feels about what went down and if hes not then its better to find out fast.

if all goes well ill talk to you about this later. it feels shitty like im asking you to prove your worth. im not. but i cant…

i just cant talk about this with you yet. i hope you understand.

I understand. Was hoping maybe if I guessed right it might make it easier for you to talk about it, but I’m not trying to force it.

I am going to give you another hug next time I see you? So many fucking hugs.

Yes. Absolutely. Well I’ve never been good at baking bread (told you I over-knead) but I’m happy to help and maybe you could teach me? We also do have so many snacks from Almachadta and Samudra when you want them.

Stale ass magic … probably the Architect? I can share the memory with you if you want to confirm? (Do you want to know about all this shit? I’m not sure if … well. I’m inclined in a ‘share everything’ manner but let me know if there’s things you don’t want to know).

And yeah. Talking to Badri has been. Good. Great. Just wish I could hug him.

Anyway. If you ever want to hear about how long it’s taken me to believe that we might be able to save anything at all … I can tell you that too. Sometimes there’s days where I still feel hollow about it and it is a performance. Less days than days I believe, but still.

Not me trying to get more info out of you, but: “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.” Those words are the first ones I remember from my favorite poem. They’re me, in a way.

whoever made this system without implementing proper threading was a goddamn criminal btw. lets see does THIS work?

no i said stale magic ass. totally different. i think you’re right, though. i dipped my toes into the library and he sounds absolutely like his magic smells like stale ass

SWEET you actually brought snacks. im so excited. the beast has amazing food but like. ya’ll will have things we never would have even thought of. also mostly i just need an extra pair of hands. jae, i hear you say, you already have an extra pair of hands! yes, i respond, it’s a very complicatedly braided loaf

i don’t think anyone on the beast, myself included, is ever gonna say no to a hug or a challenge. maybe sometimes but only if we’re feeling like ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag in some way shape or form

as for the other questions…

i am, in fact, an incurable optimist. i think two things are true.

i think you six are going to beat me in a rite some day,

and i think that i will eventually tell you everything i know.

those two things arent connected btw im not some OTHER motherfucker you have to beat in a rite and then oop out of the piñata pops a horrible secret, wohoo, fun for everybody. theyre just both things i think are true.

I’m still not over the fact we don’t have fucking delete or edit functionality. I mucked up a great joke at Jorule and it didn’t land because of a typo. Though. What are you even typing on? Can you access this with your brain?

Hahaha! I stand corrected. “Stale magic ass.” Okay okay okay.

Well, then, you’re right, I’m not the type to pledge fealty but I am the type to pledge my hands to help you make a very fancy braided loaf.

Oh man I just realized the kind of hairstyles I could manage with four arms. You keep your hair short so maybe you don’t know but I spend so much time braiding my hair. Like half of the the muscle tone in my arms is from dealing with my hair, not all the handstands and backflips. Though I think I figured out something with gnosis to make it a bit easier (sorry I don’t know if this is the kind of thing you care about, but Samudra was a nightmare because it was so humid and the frizz almost defeated me).

And of course we brought snacks. We had already got a bunch of things from Samudra because we just came from there, but also Aury, Awa and I made a trip back to Almachadta just before arriving here and I picked up a bunch of things from there too. I’ll make you a fancy plate tasting plate. Maybe we can all do it together?

I don’t know how you feel about big group activities that aren’t the Rite, actually. You’re my friend but I guess it’s a bit different with the others? I don’t think it has to be, but I know you have history with Aury and Luĉja, and while you’ve met Awa, Archie, and Wolf you don’t know them. I think. Though. Hm.

I told you I’m bad at patience, and that means when I meet someone who I feel “yes, this is someone I’ve been waiting forever to know and love” I don’t feel the need to. Wait for it? I felt that with most of my friends early, and then with Caion, and Zaya, and … you especially, Jae. I want you to be part of … whatever weird nerdass clan we’re building. Part of our story.

I hope that’s not. It’s okay if you’re not interested, or ready to step into my messy, overfull home of weirdos. But I’ll hold a place for you until you are.

And I will hear your story, in your own words, one day. No matter how long it takes.

That is a promise.

the magic antennas strapped to my tits, obviously

your hair is amazing. every so often i get bored of having long hair or short hair and switch things up and, yeah, gotta say the extra arms do help with the whole damn process

i think its fair to say that i know wolf pretty well by now. wouldnt mind getting to talk to him with words instead of blades. i get the feeling he’s going to find something that speaks to him in the bazaar to replace the knives im keeping safe for him.

i can tell that they’re special to him. and i have a hunch. and hes cute. anyways.

i… thats really, really kind. and i dont want to repay that kindness rudely. for whatever it’s worth, i think hanging out with you guys and sharing a meal would be a blast. i thoroughly enjoyed fighting all of you, that was the most fun ive had in a while. if im still keeping my distance, its not because i dont think you’re rad as fuck

i have a reputation to uphold yknow

Man I can’t believe you talked about the magic antennas strapped to your tits. I cannot believe any of that. I asked you if you were passing info to the Scorpion Queen. I fucking. You’re such a shit.

I’ve considered cutting my hair now and then but Iikka loved braiding it, said it was beautiful, and like obviously the person who raises you is going to say you’re beautiful, but when. Er. I had a bad run with a couple attempts at dating in my early teens and started to feel like. Well. Even if I’m not particularly good-looking I always thought my hair was nice, yeah.

Hahaha yeah Wolf’s great. He’s the brother my heart chose. I’m sure you’ll love him if you talk.

Yeah stop saying you’re worried about being rude. I know you’re not trying to be rude. You’re trapped in the messy bitch mines and you don’t know how to get out. I’m there with you, even with all the progress I’ve made.

Though like. Fuck your reputation? That’s easy for me to say I guess. No one here knows me, and Light knows being on Almachadta is … different. But. Sometimes it feels like you’re making excuses you don’t even believe in. Jae, that sucks.

Though rereading this thread, I did realize you promised me a 1 on 1 duel when we met. Can I hold you to that?

tbh im not used to giving a shit about coming off as rude. it’s a novel sensation and im enjoying it

will openly admit i laughed pr. hard when this happened. it was great. i love being technically accurate its the best

i regret to inform you that you’re hot as fuck??? do we need to feed a motherfucker to a brontosaurus. im sure you saw some on the way in to town so you know im not bullshitting you about brontosaurus

id never bullshit you about brontosaurus

a thing you will learn about me is that i will never, ever say no to a duel, esp not with someone who fights dirty (laudatory)

when you know something is a terrible idea……..

and you do it anyway!!!!

besides itll be fun

OKAY as long as you’re enjoying it. But. I can handle rudeness. I mean. I might lose my shit and scream at you, but I did barrel through a whole lot of misunderstandings with Jorule to find his soft, gooey center. So.

ALSO I notice you are not confirming or denying the antenna tits.

Oh. Is that what those weird long-necked things were? They were huge.

Hm. As for my looks … wanna know some peak messy bitch mines stuff? When we first met Zaya and Aurelius just. Kind of shut down, I thought. This isn’t fair to him, okay, and I’m past it, but I thought … oh, here’s someone who actually deserves him. She’s beautiful. Her hair caught the starlight and she has this gorgeous magic I’ve never even seen and she lit the way home and she waited and was there for him. And I was like, “this is the kind of person he deserves; he just met me and I have none of the grace or the chill or the intelligence” and it’s just.

I know he likes me but I keep thinking he could do better. And like. A lot of the guys I knew when I was a teenager—they liked me well enough to fuck me but not date me, you know? The kind of girl that’s used, not the kind of girl that’s treasured. And like. Zaya seems like the kind of girl who gets treasured.

When we arrived on Samudra, Archie’s partner, Caion—he’d waited for Archie, had never given up on him. And I just. Zaya reminded me of that, but with Annarr, and … obviously I was really wrong about the shape of the relationship, right? Like it’s funny in retrospect and kind of shitty that I made it about me when Aury needed my support dealing with being Annarr and not, but. I don’t know.

You can’t feed any of these shitty teen dirtbags to a brontosaurus, though, because I don’t remember their names or their faces.

But. I don’t know. Thanks for saying I’m hot? I’ve never really seen it. Like Awa likes me, and Aurelius … I think I’m starting to trust that he thinks I’m physically attractive, but. I’m no Zaya. Or you, honestly.

Good. I made a deck just for you. Just say the word.

And. I remembered my isovanhempi’s name. It was Iikka. I was talking to Badri, and he—it was good, it was great, Jae, and I remembered. Thank you. I owe you a lot just for letting me be a messy bitch at you there. (I also remembered my biological parent’s names, but that’s less exciting, I think).

Hm. Question. I’ve been thinking a bit about … everyone has these Angel titles, right? Seye said she’s the Angel of Freedom, Jorule is the Angel of Darkness and Truth, I … well. I had a Weird Experience that I might tell you the story of next time you’re in the mood for it. Are you the Angel of anything?

And. Do you want me to ask them to stop calling you Crimson? I don’t know what your relationship with your previous lives were like, but. I want people to see you as you are now, not as you were.

in your defense, zaya is really, really distractingly hot and also pr. fuckin wonderful

however comma meaningful pause

theres no ‘kind of girl that’s used’. there’s men that use women. and women that also use women, and men who use men. and - i command people. here, elsewhere, anywhere i go. there’s people that want to be instruments. i’ll use them if they place themselves in my hand as a weapon. even if you wanted everything that actually happened, that doesnt mean you are, or ever were, a kind of girl that’s used

anyways, forgetting’s kinder than they deserve but probably the right play. if you ever need anyone fed to a brontosaur in the future though, call me

i guess what i want to say more than anything is

why would anyone want you to be someone else when you could be you, instead

as for the second question… it might not surprise you that people have called me the angel of hope, before.

and jorule can call me anything he wants to as long as it’s not ‘late to a duel’, we got history, it’s fine

but right now? flesh and blood and bone, in this world with its fire and clanging metal and howling beasts

i’m jae

But that’s always been the thing I think. That’s at least part of what that whole, long sad story was about. I’ve never felt like I was worth much at all. I’d rather be someone whose radiance immediately draws everyone in, who people can’t look away from when she walks in a room. Being the Sword-Saint gave me some of that. Learning to be useful gave me more. And I know I can perform impossible works of gnosis so. Yeah.

Again I’m working on. Feeling out how to express myself with my appearance that feels both good for me and draws the attention of the two people whose attention I most want to draw. And I trust, now, that they both do and would treasure me even if I can’t be 120% or even 80%, but.

It’s easy to shake that trust. Play a role so often you start wishing you could fully embody the role and not be yourself.

It’s. A problem. I know Aury and Awa both … fuck I know anyone would be devastated to hear me still saying this about myself. And I feel it less and less often, but I still feel it.

Did you ever struggle to like yourself or was that never a Jae failure mode?

Yeah? Is it because you’re hoarding all that hope Ms. I Am The Odds?

And good. I’m glad to know that. And I’m glad you’re Jae, not any of the other selves you could be. Seye said something about appreciating being alive right now, right here, and I’ve been trying to do it more. I love your world. On Samudra I felt like I was drowning but here I feel like I could do almost anything. I want to experience it all.

i do think i understand this.

i havent always been a very good person, i dont think. and i havent… changed who i am, deep down. who is. definitely NOT a person who has ever had that problem, no. kind of the opposite, really. to the point that the question is kinda funny to think about, but

being here and being jae has taught me some things

and some of those things havent felt particularly comfortable

i think, maybe, they were things i had to learn

anyways were still in the messy bitch mines salme!!! keep digging i believe in both of us

and i’m glad to hear you’re enjoying it here.

Yeah I’m learning it’s okay to want people to look at me now and then. Though … oh. I guess me whinging about how loud I am and my concern with warping the narrative fabric around me is. Sort of extra funny now.

Still if I don’t watch myself I can be self-absorbed and I never want to not be someone Aury or Awa or the others can’t rely on because I’m being self-absorbed.

eh i wouldnt call it funny

someone told you, hey salme, theres a rule that you’ve gotta be small and you’ve gotta be quiet

and you said, but i don’t want to be small and i dont want to be quiet

and they said, sorry, that’s the rules

anyways heres the secret. there are no rules

not like that, anyways

never were any

Less that I was told there were rules and more I figured out that. Being small and quiet was easier and safer and got you farther. And then being the Sword-Saint let me flashy and loud but not in a way where people saw me?

What I’m getting at is it was all self-inflicted.

And being able to be what people need in a moment of crisis is a skill and I’m not sad it’s one I have. But.

Knowing people love me despite my messiness, maybe even because of it?

That’s. Kind of everything, isn’t it? That’s what you were saying all along.

eh if being small and quiet was easier and safer, that still means someone told you to be small and quiet, but with extra steps. and to that i say: brontosaurus

jae, i hear you saying, jae that is your answer to everything

its actually not, its just very fun to think about feeding my enemies to enormous friendly lizard monsters

i get that you dont want to blame other people for what you could instead blame yourself for and you might even be right that no one person is actually at fault but if you are that means you are not at fault here either doesnt it

anyways its all kind of irrelevant maybe b/c you got there in the end

you gotta love each other when youre in the messy bitch mines salme its the only thing youve got!!!

and i want to say thank you

because

i’d been losing track of that myself, lately, i think

and you helped remind me that it was true

so, thank you

Anyone ever tell you it’s extremely rude when you’re extremely correct about things?

And: good. I’m glad I helped remind you. I get you’re big in on this Hero thing, and maybe that’s a solo gig for you, but I play a hero on Almachadta and it’s a lonely one too. It didn’t click, really, the clear line of comparison, until I was at the Bazaar with Zaya but. It’s not the same, obviously, but. It’s not really that different.

Anyway, I’m not going to say “anything I can do to help you I will” because that seems like an unwise promise to make, but you’re my friend, and I love you. That is true. And there’s very little I won’t do for my friends.

Though, if you’d do me a favor … Zaya mentioned you have a set of earrings from a very special jewelry shop. They don’t happen to have any otherworldly properties that caused you to wig the fuck out upon receiving them, do they? Asking for a bird.

no b/c im always right, and they would get bored of saying the same thing over and over again

good on you for not making promises you cant keep. respect. im fine for the time being, tho, and if theres ever anything i do need from you i know where to find you >:)

the earrings zaya gave me? nothing weird about em that- well fuck hang on now i have to go take them out and look up their ass with a flashlight just to check

Your earrings have an ass that you can look up with a flashlight?

everything has an ass you can look up with a flashlight if you try hard and believe in yourself

anyways, they seem normal to me

other things that are easier with 4 arms btw, removing and putting in earrings. highly recommend

Is there anything that isn’t easier with four arms? Probably shopping for clothes, though I’m guessing you get everything custom so it’s a non-issue.

Also think about whether you want to have our Rite first, or our bread-making. My inclination is Rite first, then bread and snacks, but it’s up to you.

oddly, making out in bed

figuring out what to do with one of your arms is bad enough, imagine two of them

there ARE certain significant upsides, though

rite first! always rite first. then bread and snacks.

Have you considered simply winning against the bed, thus making it not your problem anymore, Ms. True Hero?

you say that like i havent just punched a hole in the bed out of frustration

multiple times

it turns out that just makes it tomorrow you’s problem and she’s gonna be mad as hornets

Well that sounds like it’s not winning against the bed. That sounds like it’s letting the bed win against you.

Have you considered reorienting the criteria of “winning,” Ms. Hero?

… Though how many mattresses have you gone through.

Which. Jae. Mattresses on Samudra are magical. You can adjust them with a simple thought. They’re find on the Beast too, but. Imagine a bed that’s the perfect size and softness for what you want? But is also perfect for whoever you’re sharing a bed with? And the sheets change themselves with just a thought?

Samudra was hard on me for a lot of reasons, but I really do miss our room at the Academy.

holy shit

that sounds amazing

okay new plan, figure out how to import mattresses from samudra

Great news, Jae. I know a guy.

Or rather I know the acting head of the Academy (you do too, sort of; that’s Caion. He sassed your ass).

Not sure about transport. There’s the train between worlds. Awa can sometimes … hm. Aurelius has his pocket dimension but. Hm. Maybe the libray?

Anyway it won’t work for importing things at scale but I could probably get you one?

hahahahahha lmao thats the head of the academy??? maybe samudra is cool after all

i gotta be careful about asking for dumb things because youll be like YEAH ACTUALLY LETS MAKE THAT WORK

on the other hand i do legit want one of these now. that would rule. yeah

I mean if you can’t use your weird plane-traveling powers to get your friends comfortable mattresses then what is even the point. Besides, Caion’s trapped in meetings all day so. You know.

Thanks, by the way, for a lovely time just hanging out. I hope we get to do so again soon, though Light you weren’t kidding about bread-loaf complexity.

I’ve got to be honest with you, though. I think I’m starting to see the shape of things with … at least your part in what’s going on with the Beast, and I. Hate it, frankly. I hate it a lot. Hate it so much I almost asked Jorule to read this whole thread and tell me if my read seemed off.

He said you’re more of a “beg forgiveness” than “ask permission” person, but you’ve respected my privacy and I absolutely want to respect yours insomuch as I can. I. Honestly don’t know what to do. Was going to avoid casting a reply until I figured it out, but you’ve been my companion through the messy bitch mines so I might as well be a messy bitch here.

I mean. I do know what I’m going to do, which is respect your fucking privacy. Light knows you get precious little of it, and yeah, you court that on purpose, but. This is our messy bitch thread, not anyone else’s. I guess I just needed to let you know that I was tempted. And that’s not a crime, obviously, but. You deserve to know where I’m at.

Anyway. I’m sort of scared we have a couple particular things in common that … I’d prefer not to have in common with anyone.

You don’t have to reply to this, but I did have to say it.

babe who among us has not been tempted with various things that would be bad ideas

some of us even do it anyways, like having a rite with the girl packing the scariest tone you’ve ever seen. zero regrets btw

whatever happens happens. if you did make a choice that pisses me off then you piss me off and get to live with it and like. not like im not going to be thinking about you every time im holding court now no matter what

anyways

the messy bitch mines are deep and theres fuckin monsters there

if we are in the deepest darkest most fucked up shafts of the messy bitch mines in some way shape or form

then at least we can hear each other fighting our own demons

anyways, roll the dice with me. flip a coin. itll be in the air a minute

but itll come down either heads or tails

its a loaded coin

but if you flip a loaded coin enough times

and keep betting on the wrong side

some day youll win big

anyways, i had a great time.

hope your friends like the bread

How well do you remember, Jae? Is your throne remade with your body? Four thousand years has a long, long time. That’s three or four cycles in Almachadta. How well do you remember between cycles, bodies, millennia?

Here is a story I’ve alluded to, but: the last Sword-Saint in any cycle carves a tally mark in the shrine where the Mask is kept. The shrine is the only dark place in Almachadta, a small void between roots and dirt. It is a little like a grave.

Part of being a performer is the rehearsal, you know. When I was at my worst, when I was least myself, I imagined that moment when I’d carve my own tally mark. How deep I’d gouge it with my nail, maybe the smear of blood I’d leave. The intent to leave a violent dash at the end. How can you hope to represent yourself in a single line? The Mask holds the memories of the Sword-Saints and their tally marks more clearly that it holds memories of us otherwise. The one chance I had to mark that I lived and that I died, distilled into a single, desperate line.

You cannot possibly relate. I am so loud but I am also small and breakable and young. I have never once thought I would endure.

But my sword in your throne is much better than a tally mark could hope to be. That was not the only reason I did it—it was more selfish than that even—but on reflection, it was the correct choice.

Four thousand years. Multiple bodies. My name is Salme tou Alsos, the Sword-Saint of Almachadta, and you will carry me with you from this point on.

And Jae? You’re going to tell me precisely what circumstances led to you being the single thing that endures. And if it was this Zosimos fucker I’m going to feed him to a brontosaurus.

[For the historical record, there was a reasonably significant gap in between the last post, and this one, IC as well.]

i have a very good memory. but the throne’s memory is even better. i’m glad your sword is there, too.

i didn’t say this at the time because i had other things on my mind, but thank you for telling me its story. i can tell, when a weapon’s meant a lot to people. there’s a weight. a way the light bends around it. i won’t forget it

or the tally-marks

one time, salme

one time, i carved my own name on the surface of a moon

not one of the beast’s. somewhere else

because i wanted the world to know that i was there

it’s not the same, though. it seems petty in retrospect. it was, wasn’t it

fuck

what the fuck world is this where i write something and then scratch it out and write it again and scratch it out. this is bullshit, salme. bullshit

anyways

it wasnt the old man, though. he was a chump and i kicked his ass and he retired in the hills

i went down into the messy bitch mines all on my own, babe

wanna feed me to a brontosaurus about it youre gonna hafta get in line

I mean I went down into the messy bitch mines all on my own too, but you still were about ready to incinerate Badri for it. I wouldn’t feed you to a brontosaurus. I think you’ve been through the brontosaurus maw plenty. I think I’ve also been through the brontosaurus maw.

Even if we choose difficult roles for ourselves that doesn’t mean we deserve everything that happens to us during those roles. I took on the Mask for many reasons, and one of them was that I thought I could bear whatever its secret was with grace. For a long time I thought I did better than most Sword-Saints do. Other Sword-Saints have shattered under the weight. I was simply determined to perform to my utmost.

But. Then I realized, pretty recently, that I didn’t shatter simply because I simply shut down. Can’t be sad if you’re not letting yourself feel anything at all.

And I don’t think that’s. If I’m being especially unkind to myself I can say I don’t deserve to feel sad about this because it’s a choice I made. And yes, I would have rather been the Sword-Saint than anyone else on Almachadta have been the Sword-Saint. I still … intellectually know I’m not at fault for the harm it caused me.

Maybe there’s a different story for you. But. However brave and strong and heroic and hopeful you are or were … there’s shit that hard for you to bear, and I refuse to believe you don’t deserve empathy and care for it.

The “carve your name on the moon” thing is a little extra, I will concede that, but also I’ve seen you’re palace. You are the most extra person I’ve ever met or heard tell of. And I’m sitting on a lot of memories about the Mask.

Anything you’re willing to tell me about Zosimos other than that he was a chump?

And, if I haven’t fucked this up, wanna hang out again sometime soon? I’d like to show you the Liminal Library and I’ve got a weaving project I could use some extra hands for.

goddess im going to be grinning like an asshole about this one for days lmao

love you too babe

anyways youre right about how you shouldnt kick your own ass??? im not kicking my own ass either. you wanted to know who got me into this mess and: its this bitch!!! i got me into this mess and if you wound back the clock and i were standing there in front of the Get Into This Mess button i wound windmill slam it just like i did the first time. you get why, i dont actually have to explain it to you. thats nice

honestly i dont even remember that much about the old man other than that he didnt put up too much of a fight and slunk off when someone else who actually wanted to be in charge showed up

anyways that sounds tight, i’d like that. four entire extra hands babe thats two more than most people have. lets goooo

Of course you’d take that as a compliment. You’re ridiculous. Absurd. Extra. Anything I could possibly say in response will just be taken as more of a compliment.

Of course you don’t remember, if he was just a predecessor to your most Awesome Highness. Was he a righteous king? Terrible tyrant? There’s apparently been a version of this guy on every plane. He carved the Mask on Almachadta and … apparently turned into a noöplankton on Samudra? (Noöplankton are like. Weird liminal jellyfish things that can talk but only remember the current moment?). Some weird metaphysical shit going on with this guy (these guys? still not sure).

Oh excellent. Let me know when’s good for you. We’re going to be in Queenstown for a while. I’m working on a gift for you, but if I don’t have it done by the time we meet up for the weaving session then I’ll just give it to you next time.

was i not supposed to take an obvious compliment as a compliment? i’d say it made my entire month but you already did that, so

the fuck????????? what the fuck???????? what the fuck

how does a motherfucker turn into? plankton??? how????? does that even work???? ive seen a lot of shit salme. i have. questions

anyways, whenever’s good as far as hanging out, if i’m in the middle of something i’ll tell them to get fucked and come back later. thats the privilege of a pure heart baybeeeee

Well, don’t get too complacent. There’s still time left for me outdo myself.

My friend I do not know. This was Wolf’s observation, which he made through doing Weird Wolf Shit that I … well. I know I also do Weird Salme Shit so I can’t talk but somehow he Knows This To Be True. So anyway, that’s why I was asking about Zosimos here.

Okay I’ll let you know. I’m still. Well, I need to get a new sword, and I have some plans, but I’ll let you know how things shake out. Will I be coming to the palace again? The library’s portable.

you know where the elevator is, now!!! although idk. well play it by ear i guess

Jae, you said you had to learn some uncomfortable things about yourself, right? Were they all … bad things?

I’m sitting with some realizations about myself and I’m not sure. How I feel about them? They aren’t bad, really. Honestly they’re. Flattering, for the most part. But they make me a little uncomfortable too.

I hadn’t ever considered myself particularly ambitious, but I’ve realized lately that in some ways I am. And then someone, I’m not even sure who, called me on it.

I’m not sure what to do with that. Even assuming I need to do anything. But it’s just. I don’t need to be the best, or the brightest, not all the time. But I absolutely have goals and wants and there’s not much I wouldn’t do to achieve them.

I guess you saw that firsthand, and you’re the last person who’d tell me there’s something wrong with that approach, but. I don’t know.

i dont think they were all bad things. definitely shit that really challenged my idea of who i was which is. y’know. pretty firmly-established. so i’ve been eating THAT bluffalo one bite at a time

anyways

if youre looking for someone to tell you its ok to want things you absolutely came to the right jae. although i get the impression that most of your clan would agree with me on this one give or take some slapfights about whats fine to do in order to get there. also kinda tough for me to imagine you wanting something different enough from what THEY all want for it to be more of a problem than just yapping at each other though ya’ll seem like a tight bunch.

give yourself time, i guess. and if anyone gives you SHIT for wanting things theres always a brontosaurus

Oh I don’t think anyone who matters would give me shit for this stuff. I think they’d celebrate it, actually. It’s just letting the truth of it settle over me. It’s realizing the depth of my want. It’s acknowledging I’ve been using myself as a resource to get it for years.

It’s … Jorule called me a leader, and I’d never considered myself as that either. That feels … important. Active. I’d always thought of myself as more of a passive watcher, a storyteller. At best someone who took on the shape most needed at the time. And I can still do that, but it’s wearing a mask. Some of the things I do he identified as leadership are also playing a role. Some of them aren’t.

I don’t know. I’ve been realizing … this will sound silly considering what we talked about upstrand, but I’ve been realizing even if I’m not singing an island into being (remind me to tell you this story) I’m still. Not impressive but. Worthwhile.

That shouldn’t be uncomfortable. I think I’ve been using my own lack of self-confidence as a … safety net? Or something?

good! thats what i like to hear. give yourself time with it. snuggle up in that truth like a fluffy soft blanket

i dont think you could play the role you chose to play without the ability to take charge when you need to. maybe im wrong? anyways, none of this surprises me from everything i’ve seen of you

rules that you’re starting to see yourself the way others see you

makes sense that it feels like you’re standing on quicksand tho. you’ll get your feet

Ah well. I guess. The Sword-Saint … or at least, when I’m working as the Sword-Saint, the first thing I do is look at a situation and figure out what I need to be. Then it’s a matter of being it. Sometimes that involves taking charge. Sometimes that involves following a script already laid out for you.

Sometimes, Jae, I realize that for all the wisdom I contain and all the lives I’ve experienced through the Mask that I’m very young indeed.

Though I do have an idle question. Right before we met, when you told me you were watched by the Soldier & Brother (which, you asshole, you had to have known I wasn’t going to be looking at my tomestone) you mentioned … it almost sounded like you got to choose your constellation. Did you?

And, honestly, for my own entertainment, would you give me your thoughts on the constellations? And how they rate on motherfuckerness?

“HI THERE” on the roof of the palace? Really?

how do you know zaya didnt go up and put that there!!!!

hope you had a good time with your nerd <3

a) lmao calculated. gottem!!!

b) you can run away from one and run towards another. or at least, you can if you’re a pure heart. i dont know if you can if you’re not, honestly? tryna get someone to find out if they can really isnt my style on several levels.

anyways heres Jaes Objective And Scientific Scale Of Constellation Motherfuckerness

key and gate: terrifying motherfucker. want them on my side of a fight

lantern and eye: not a motherfucker at all. you want somethin to look at ill give you something to look at

the beating heart: love an endurance predator. would also want on my side of a fight

the duelist’s mask: extra large motherfucker with motherfucker sprinkles as previously discussed

unburnt book: what a good constellation. 10/10 tbh

sundered wolf: ohhhh god fucking terrifying motherfucker. like. cool as fuck. sees eye to eye with me. but. hahaha

hollow skull: Dont Like It, At All, 0/10, fuck off, go away

golden lion: another 10/10 constellation. extremely friend shaped

fiend engine: feels like it should be scary but isn’t, at all?

soldier-and-brother: lets goooo baybeeee

falling leaf: definitely not my jam but also doesnt really seem like a motherfucker to me. its a leaf how can a leaf be a motherfucker. actually youre from almachadta you can probably answer that

dreaming serpent: uuuggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

empty space: exciting, tbh. the anti-motherfucker of the constellations.

stillness and the song: hard to place on the Motherfucker Scale b/c they’re either the Most Motherfucker or the Least Motherfucker kind of definitionally and its impossible to say which???

Be serious, Jae. Even if Zaya did you absolutely were in cahoots about it.

And I had an amazing time. He’s … it was amazing.

Jorule’s Key-and-Gate and I had a moment recently where I realized he’d be fucking terrifying if he wasn’t on our side. It’s weird, because so often he’s just A Guy that I get in recreational slapfights with.

I didn’t expect that reaction to the Golden Lion though it makes sense. Hm. Would you be willing to tell me about Annarr? I’ve been trying to. I want to get a sense of his story. I’m talking with Zaya about him, and I’m going to reach out to Zaed, but. I’d value your perspective too.

Thank you for your correct and objective takes. I laughed a lot.

jorule is fucking terrifying even if he IS on your side tbh but i’d still rather be on his side of a fight than not having experienced both

hmm. annarr was… so he was tiny when he was a kid. like. tiny tiny. and everyone thought he’d never grow up to be a hunter, like tiny people cant be absolutely fucking terrifying monster hunters in their own right but. idk people are weird here sometimes about being physically imposing. comes in handy for me i guess?

so he learned how to fight, but he also learned fiendcraft, and he studied the ways fiends and monsters behave. he was careful and observant. knew my tells, when he fought me, and after the first good hit he got in i was being careful. did some kind of switcheroo slam shuffle on me and i was staring down the barrel of a void flare. had to scorpion and the frog him and. something fucking bizarre happened when i did that i still dont have an explanation for. pulled us both in a direction that isnt one of the normal ones. hasnt happened before or since. said some things i shouldn’t have to try and give him context for what the fuck happened and keep his mind from turning into soup, and somehow that turned into him deciding his life was a chip in my pile. not the first time that’s happened to me at least, so i knew what to do with it.

i think if i’d KNOWN what was going to happen, and told him to go investigate, and told HIM what would happen… he would have done it anyways.

Yeah you two were enemies, right, the first time around? I haven’t asked him much about you since I’ve known you. I’m not … interested, in how you choose to define yourself now, as Jae, but he did tell me a little. Seye mentioned a little more—I think that’s where I got that idea? And … I don’t know that I find Jorule terrifying now, honestly. He’s. Someone I feel impossibly safe around? Someone I wish I could do something for? But both he and Aurelius tend to evoke that in me, though in different ways.

Physical imposition is a pretty funny criterion considering that the Rite doesn’t rely on physicality at all. [Void Flare] will still fuck you up if stacked right. But I mean. Some people get distracted by what’s in front of them and don’t actually pay attention to the rest of it. Sounds like that’s not uncommon on the Beast. It’s also not uncommon on Almachadta, though less common, I think.

Do you … remember exactly what you said? Or exactly what happened? I know some of it. That was Aurelius’ big secret, the Truth That Burns. The version he told me was, “None of this is Real. You’re all just fictional characters in someone else’s story.” I don’t know if … hm. Early on, the line between Aurelius and Jorule was … less marked. I don’t know if that’s what you told Annarr, or if that’s a Jorule-inflected reading or what. Was there more that you said? Or to the situation? And if there was would you be willing to tell me?

I recently received a necklace from a jewelry seller. It’s a compass rose, with a mote of quicksilver that points in a ninth direction—perpendicular to the rest. “The Rose Gold Rose” is what the jewelry seller called it. Was it … like that? It’s a little abstract, but … that’s what your wording reminded me of.

I can also ask Aurelius about this too and I probably should. I thought I knew the story of what happened with Annarr but I realize I made a lot of assumptions, and I didn’t really know anything at all. Though. When we dueled, you and I, that hit with the void flare? I learned that from him. Learned a lot from him, really, and I’m still learning. So there’s another line of continuity, I guess.

enemies is probably not the right way to put it vs… i always gotta prove myself against everyone i meet, right? thats still true. and jorule and i are, he’ll shit iron filings if he hears me saying this, enough alike that i think we were always going to clash. i respect his skill and his power and tbh always have! honestly not a huge list of people i can say that about. makes sense that he makes you feel safe. point in his favor right there tbh.

im trying to remember exactly what i said to annarr. you know how sometimes in the middle of a life or death thing your memories get fuzzy? imagine that but with a weird fucking negative space wedgie happening at the same time. bad scene, bad vibes. but the gist of it was that the world he was born into was a story, my story specifically. that he was a character the world wrote into its narrative, that what he was experiencing was… being above the story, and looking in. and that he should listen to me and follow me back and trust me that it’d all turn out ok in the end. ok yeah i did remember exactly what i said to him in the end and now im fuckin sad (i’ll be fine. i just. hate being a liar.)

Would you be willing to … hm. I think I can see some of the similarities with you and Jorule. Neither of you like to lose. But. I’m absolutely curious what the other commonalities are. (For all we talk a lot we … I know facts about his life, but who he is and who he’s been … that’s harder to get a handle on). The unevenness of it would bother me, honestly, if I wasn’t certain he’d never purposefully harm me (at least without good reason).

Yeah it’s the weird negative space wedgie that I’m curious about. There’s a thing I can do, a kind of … memory-sharing mind-link. Would you be willing to try to show me next time we’re in person together? It’s a controlled experience; I wouldn’t have access to any of your other memories and there’s one of mine I’d like to share with you as well. You can, as always, say no. “Being above the story looking in” is a phenomenon I’m very interested in.

And. You don’t know if that’s what made things not all right for him. I’d venture to say the Architect nabbing him and searing holes in his brain probably was the bigger problem, though I don’t know that for certain either. You’re allowed to feel grief (I’d be a hypocrite to say otherwise) but don’t apportion blame quite yet.

It’s frustrating. I told Zaed this but I wish I had answers. I wish … hm. Being the Sword-Saint is about a lot of things, but grief’s a decent portion of it. Aurelius said I didn’t have much experience with people going out on a Hunt and not returning, and he’s right. My personal experience with grief was … knowing exactly what happened. The drab, unheroic reality of someone dying in their sleep. But I’ve helped people through their grief when they don’t get to know, right? When there’s no body, just an empty grave. It’s usually by finding out their story insomuch as I can find out the story. I wish … I’d like to do this for Annarr, for the people who loved him.

(And maybe I feel a bit guilty still because even seeing all this grief and all this difficulty I don’t know that I’ll ever stop being grateful that I met Aurelius. I think I would have liked Annarr just fine, honestly, but.)

Ah you probably didn’t need to hear all this. Here’s a funny thought: I picked up my first book in the Taken By The Scorpion Queen series. I can’t believe these exist. Aury said you’ve written some?

you should be happy that you got to meet aurelius. annarr would kick your ass if he felt like concern for him was getting in the way of being happy you met aurelius im pretty sure. just like hed kick my ass for moping about having lied to him. i mean id win the rite but he’d kick my ass pretty hard in the process.

also this occurred to me before but i was in my feels. that piece of jewelry you got. out of mild curiosity does it have any iron in it? as a design element?

lmaoo oh my god. oh my god. i will never tell if i have or have not written any of those. theyre so fun arent they???

Well I mean concern for Annarr isn’t getting in the way of being grateful I have Aury. That’s part of … hm. Realizing again that I’m more tenebrous than I previously thought is. A bit of a doozy I think.

Yeah it has a ring of cold iron in it. Why do you ask?

“Fun” is a word. I’ve never read the word “pheromones” so many times, and whoever wrote this one seems wholly unfamiliar with the concept of scent and how it works.

You aren’t hiding a harem somewhere are you? Odds are low but not impossible on that one.

Jae I’m sorry to bother you and you might not tell me but if you can I need to know … are people who aren’t Pure Hearts ever reborn or reincarnated? Do you see the same people in different bodies over time? Is there …

I found something out and I don’t understand it. It’s about me, not you, but you’re the only person I know who might’ve lived long enough to know.

gonna ask an impertinent question: is tenebrousness considered a bad thing where you’re from? or is this just. learning exciting new things about yourself. because learning exciting new things about yourself should be exciting and theres nothing the fuck wrong with who you are

hah i thought so! how in the fuck did that get there? someone i knew a long time ago had- in every way that matters i think the iron ring that’s part of that piece was his signature weapon. neat that it somehow found you but its whole thing is knowing where it needs to be, i guess

babe i wouldnt be hiding it have you met me

this… hm.

the realest and truest answer i can give you is, im not sure and its something ive wondered. a lot.

ultimately i dont know if it makes a difference i guess. if i know someone and then generations later i meet someone and they remind me of someone i knew, is that a thing happening in my own head? is it speaking to some kind of grand magical sparkle times universal truth of creation? does history echo on itself? it feels like a performance for my benefit if it does and even then i dont know if it could ever. actually matter

you’re who you are when you are who you are. i dont even think who you were ten years ago matters as much as who you are right now. fuck i dont think who you were ten minutes ago matters as much as who you are right now. but i get that you think about these things different from me so i understand why the thought would be gnawing at you.

what did you see? aint ever a bother. my ass is the center of the universe sure but that doesnt mean im not pr. much always gonna be interested in whats going on with you, babe

It’s … the latter. I’ve always struggled with wanting things, and when I became the Sword-Saint, I felt the role needed to be played by someone who set all their wants aside. I don’t, generally speaking, believe much in the greater good (the good of who, Jae?) but in this particular case, when it was all of Almachadta versus myself—that felt very unambiguous.

I’m not saying I’m incapable of being radiant, but I’ve tried to exist in a space where neither apply. It’s only recently I’ve realized that I’ve always been treating myself as a resource to be spent. That’s perhaps the doozy—that I must be more responsible with myself so as to not hurt the people who love me.

Was this Yima Xsaieta? He reached out and told me that part of this necklace belong to him, once. Did it belong to someone else?

It seems so funny, doesn’t it, for me to be fascinated with the history of others and terrified that some part of myself might have existed before now?

There was a moment—a memory, where I was dueling against someone in the past, in the unsundered world. It was vivid, and we were smiling, and I knew, absolutely, that the person who I was dueling was Wolf. I spoke with Awa about it, and I’m doing much better, but.

There are cycles. You know this and I know this. And I thought I knew the shape of these cycles. Finding out there might be larger cycles, that my existence might have repeated … it felt like I had fallen into another trap, like I’m in a labyrinth I cannot escape, that as soon as I see the shape of the maze I find myself entrapped in a larger one.

But. If I am determined to break these smaller cycles, there’s no reason I could not change this larger one to my liking. It just. Struck me, badly.

Sometimes it feels like a cruel joke, like we’re some … weird experiment for something large and uncaring, and I get very angry about it. But that is a big assumption to make off a tiny sliver of knowledge.

You’re right that history and context are important to me, but both you and Sininen remind me that now is what matters, and. Aurelius, when we got together, had this budding hope inside him, that the future matters more than the past. I thought it would be easy to nurture that hope, that I already had it figured out, but I think it’s also a hope I need to nurture. Indeed, before I knew who you were I shared something you said about … letting dead moments be dead, and looking to the future. It made that much of an impression on me.

The past matters because it is informative. But it is not more important than the current moment, and it is certainly not more important than the future that we are building right now. I’ve indulged myself worrying about possibilities and potentials, and I do think my ability to consider these things can be a skill, but it can also be a trap. So thank you.

If I get to love someone in multiple lifetimes, then that’s a gift. If I get to build a new love moment by moment, that is also a gift. And if the world tries to foist a destiny upon me that I don’t want, I will change it to my liking.

I’m … going to indulge myself further and say that reading this meant … a lot. There’s been … I don’t know, maybe this has a hint of destiny to it, though I don’t think it does, but. Since I started this, since I awoke in Sanctuary to meet my companions, I’ve felt. Things sliding into place with so many people, like I’m meeting people I always needed in my life. Caion, on Samudra was like that. You’re also like that for me, Jae. I’m deeply grateful for that.

Also thanks for this one. It made me laugh when laughter was badly needed.

yeah thats the thing. everything is a resource, but resources have a cost and– fuck this is a really shitty language to try and express this in. there are other languages that can do it better. when you have a resource you take care of that resource and shepherd it carefully. especially when there are other people who care about that resource. and you’re learning that! that’s good.

oh xsai talked to you? rad, okay. no yeah thats who i meant

as for the rest of it…. that sounds like a fuckin lot. probably would have thrown me for a loop too? dunno what the fuck it means but. it sounds. like you have a handle on it, or will, and im proud of you for that

and

this? thank YOU for this. meant a lot to me to read. got more to say bubbling away in the back of my brain but i have to think of how to say it

Yeah, Xsai told me he was observing to some extent. Which was kind of him, considering that I’m being observed by half the fucking universe it seems without so much as a “we’re watching.”

I’m glad I can inspire you as much as you inspire me. I look forward to hearing whatever you have bubbling away in the back of your brain.

I don’t think we’ll be able to meet up for our weaving plans in the library until we get back from hunting Glass Sharks, but that’s fine. Gives me time to finish up the thing I’m working on for you.

good hunting, then!! kick ass and bring home some glass shark fins for us all.

I’m starting to think that this isn’t even meant to be a challenge, it’s just meant so you can have some good shark-fin soup.

Which is fine, I guess. But still.

good shark-fin soup never came without a challenge, babe

Well isn’t that the fucking truth. We got mobbed by the fuckers. We’re all fine, though. Hm. I wanted … hm. Some advice?

I went down—hit my stress cap, had to retreat. It was a calculated decision. It was me or Aurelius, and it was late enough in the Rite that I knew we should prioritize our damage-dealers. Aury understood, I think. Didn’t like it, but got it. Awa did too. The others—

I think I hurt them, especially Wolf and Luĉja. I know it’s especially hard for Luĉja, them being who they are, and I. Don’t really know what I should do.

We were talking about not using myself as a resource so callously, and I think that’s important, yeah? But I also … we’re going to get hurt. We’ve already gotten hurt, and sure, I’ll have a bit of a scar, but I knew they’d win. I never once doubted. And I’m not sure … I feel like I’m going to have to try to convince them that it wasn’t me being suicidal or not valuing myself?

Maybe I’m borrowing trouble and it’ll be fine. I know once Awa got hit real bad and I wasn’t normal about it either so maybe it’s funny the shoe is on the other foot. No one likes seeing someone they care about hurt, but I need them to trust me, that I am thinking, that I am weighing my decisions. In a duel where the stakes are life and death, winning is the thing that matters and I made the choice that I thought would let us win most easily.

I don’t know. We found V and her friends and everyone’s talking and it’s good, I guess? I just feel. Weird.

HEY CONGRATULATIONS!!! we’ll throw a party for you when you get back to town. did you get a cool scar??? i should show you some of mine sometime

honestly luĉja is a grown ass robot and will deal with their emotions about the matter. i can. guess? at what’s going on with them i think but its the kind of thing where id actually feel legit uncomfortable speaking on their behalf. maybe just talk to them about whats bubblin away inside the tin can i think itd be good for them probably. theyve been through it a bit. i can relate

as for wolf im honestly a little surprised that that little battle pervert didnt understand what was going on, not like he probably wouldnt have done the same if it wouldnt mean giving up on the glory of the kill lol. maybe i have misread him its certainly possible!!! but like if he cant accept ‘no that was not me trying to get myself killed that was me being tactical, dumbass’ from you then he doesnt deserve to be your friend??? i think he probably does though and just. like. hes fought solo for a long ass time right? i get that vibe? hes probably not used to seeing someone going down in the rite and continuing on their behalf. also relate tbh

like

seeing you get hurt would make me mad as hell unless id been the one to do it???

but i like to think id comport myself with a lil fuckin dignity about it

i do think it is in fact hilarious that the shoe is on the other foot given what happened with owo but like. just assume thats whats going on. they care about you and they’re frankly not as good at this part as you or aurelius are and. yknow. that can be fine let them spend time in the messy bitch mines too goddess knows theres room enough for all of us motherfuckers here

grab v’s ass for me in spirit by which i mean politely tell her i said hi

Ha. I did get a cool scar. At least I’m pretty sure it’ll scar? Shark chomp straight to the hip. Kept the teeth too. I’m going to see if Luĉja will help me make something cool out of them.

Yeah we’ve talked about it before. Again, despite my human body I do understand a little what it’s like to carry the weight of memory and loss. Not … like they do, or you do, but a little. I’m meaning to check in with them anyone. I’ve missed them rather a lot, actually, since we’ve got here. They’ve been busy, probably checking up on their ties here.

Not sure about your read on Wolf generally but the point about him being on his own a lot is. Well-taken, and something I’ll bear in mind when speaking with him. Though I’m not going to feed Wolf to a brontosaurus because he got a little protective. I’d feed myself to a brontosaurus first and that would upset him way more and be more characteristic of me. Be serious, Jae. (I know brontosauri were not mentioned but).

With … owo?? Is that a joke I’m not getting? It … kinda looks like a face. Jorule sometimes makes faces with letters. Is that. Is that also supposed to be a face?

I will politely relay your regards when given the chance. We have been stuck in the exposition mines for several hours at this point. I need to make a quick guide, because I have to imagine this will continue happening.

Curiosity question: How close do you have to be for [The Scorpion and the Frog] to take effect? Like if I’m ever about to get murdered by land sharks again, would that card help at all?

youll note that i did not recommend creative uses of brontosauruses in my response!!! but yeah. i feel like maybe he hasnt been much of a messy bitch in his life and hes having some big messy bitch feelings rn which is always. a time

you called him awa so i called him owo. as in ‘owo whats this’. yeah the os are eyes and the w is a scrunched up mouth like youre looking at something and your eyes are all wide. its really stupid dont worry about it anyways he can be mysterious royalty on his own plane im the queen here!!! (this is a joke)

im honestly kind of surprised you dont have a flyer printed for this shit yet already. i can hook you up with a printing press once youre back in town if you need as long as i get a copy this sounds like it would be hilarious

hm. thats a fantastic question honestly. im pretty sure i have to be like. physically present and participating in the rite though based on the precise wording of the tone and believe me i TRIED to get it worded more loosely than that, lol

Imagine not being a messy bitch for most of your life. Can’t relate. Recently was a super messy bitch at Aury, though I think it worked out? I keep doing this thing where I … Jae, I do this thing where I think my boyfriend doesn’t actually like me and convince myself he’s just putting up with me because I like him. It’s insane. Then I tell Jorule, who is, I will remind you, a Spark-sharer, about it. The messiest of bitchdoms.

I mean I really like learning about the little things you can do with text here. I learned I can get all sorts of things by holding down alt and hitting numbers, like ☺ and ♥, though I haven’t really figured out the pictograms (I do copy and paste the ones other people use though). Awa’s more of a OoO though. His eyes are huge and open in wonder, and his mouth is also open in wonder. Anyway, couldn’t you theoretically have a prince just fine? You’d still be queen.

I mean the flyer would be a lot of work, and we really don’t want too many people reading about “hey, world’s ending” shit, you know? At least, from the Mask’s memories, people tend to panic, or they tend to start tearing themselves down. I’m considering structuring my thing in sections with like a “Who We Are”, “What We’re Doing” and “Where We’ve Been” thing?

Though. Jae. A printing press. I need one of those very badly. For reasons. Even if not for the flyers.

Hm well the wording says “present” not “participating” so I guess I’ll just have to figure out a way to summon you if it gets real desperate? Actually, how often do you get to leave Queenstown?

honestly you could pick worse people to be wrong at. hell probably just tell you you’re wrong and to buck up and then move on to other things? which is honestly. the same thing id say b/c youre fucking great and you got a part of you yellin that youre not and that part is just wrong and not in a way you can argue into submission with logic or w/e its just Wrong and sometimes just hearing ‘nope’ helps i think

thats. a real cute way of describing him and also is correct

i dont get out too much honestly. part of it is just. i cant bring Queenstown to the people i want to impress. and making them come to me is its own kind of flex. every so often i’ll go on some sort of expedition or another though. mostly i just find people whose opinions i know ill be able to trust and listen to what they have to say about what they found, though

Maybe it’s dumb, but I’d love to see the rest of the Beast with you? I love it here and I keep thinking about how carefully you treasured the blackberries and my embroidery. I think you’d be really fun to travel with; I think everything would feel new and exciting and real. I think also of showing you Almachadta. Sometimes I feel … it’s a quieter wonder, you know? We aren’t making scientific breakthroughs or building great cities, but there’s so much life and so many wonderous, strange things. I used to braid flowers in my hair when I was happy there. I haven’t had the chance since leaving excepting the one time I … well. That’s a story I’m going to tell you in person.

Maybe you’d hate it! But I don’t think you would. (And even Samudra is lovely even if it’s also a … challenge.)

aw, i dont think thats dumb at all. that would be pretty great. people tend to get weirdly intense when i show up somewhere which on the one hand is pretty gratifying ngl, but on the other hand sometimes you just want to stretch your legs without people frantically scrambling to roll out a red carpet. o my steak is too juicy and my lobster is too buttery. woe is me

almachadta, though. i think i’d really love to travel your world with you, yeah. i could braid so many flowers into your hair with four arms you have no idea. i miss… flowers, honestly? the beast has some spectacular flowering cacti but i remember, a long long time ago, being in a city with a botanical garden that just. went on forever, it felt like. or at least, that’s how i remember it. tried to build something like it here once or twice but it didn’t pan out. anyways.

that sounds like it’d be really nice.

I mean. I did get tired, sometimes, of being the Sword-Saint. At first they didn’t know me without the Mask, but then people learned the cloak I wore (I embroidered it; I’ll show it to you) and then they learned my face and. I don’t know. That first year I was able to put it down now and then, but after that I was always the Saint. Only Badri really called me by my real name, though I think most people knew me. I met my parents once and even when they saw my face they didn’t recognize me. And sure, I had been a child last they saw but … they recognized the Sword-Saint.

I think it was less gratifying to me, but it meant that people did notice me. I wasn’t some forgettable background prop. But sometimes I wanted to be … Salme. To just swim in a pond and laugh and cry and get angry and be impatient and get sick from eating too many berries. I think Badri found a way to let himself do that, but I never did.

So. I know you probably wouldn’t disguise yourself—I proposed dressing you up like an Endjinn to Zaya and she said you’d never go for it—but. I don’t know. I know you’re the Scorpion Queen, overseer of the Beast, but you’re also Jae, and I wish we could … just be Jae and Salme and do dumb Jae and Salme things together.

I mean. We will, once I get back, but. I don’t know.

I don’t think either of us would chose to be average even if we could. I mean. I chose to be the Sword-Saint and … you chose your role as well. Doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be nice to just … I want to go look at all those metal chunks sticking out of the ground, and explore the cacti that grow here, and I could watch the stars forever. And on Almachadta! It’s safe to camp out on the road if you’re careful and you can just. Listen to the birds and the wind through the trees and all these sounds of life. Every small thing is available to you; “The world offers itself to your imagination,” in the words of my favorite poem. Anyway. Someday, maybe? I don’t know if you can leave, but if you can’t maybe. Hm. There’s a story I’m going to tell you next time in person. You’ll like it a lot.

Anyway flowers…I wish I could bring some to you. I miss them as well. Have you ever considered trying a botanical garden in Queenstown? You’d have to artificially irrigate it, but. That’s something we could try? Out here, V’s group has managed something impressive with growing things in this valley. I was going to talk to the person most responsible but maybe he’ll give me some ideas for a Queenstown project?

Do you have favorite flowers? Mine are nasturtiums, but I love hellebore a lot since it blooms during the dim.

Also I’m guessing you wouldn’t be inclined to tell me about the deal with you and the Reachers and the word “hero” would you?

has anyone ever told you that when you describe things, i can feel em like i’m there? probably. probably someone’s told you that. anyways, it’s true.

if the world tries to STOP me from going on an almachadta road trip with you some day ill beat its ass. i can take the world on no problem. the beast will be fine without me for a bit so im not worried about that at least. some day.

oleander, foxglove, monkshood. angels trumpet. anything beautiful and utterly deadly. also, chrysanthemums? and lotus blossoms. honestly theres no flower i DON’T love, just… flowers here tend to be kinda scraggly. a lot of them smell really nice, though. there’s a little butterfly garden in the earthworks district, actually, that is doing pretty well.

not ignoring your last question btw, just getting my thoughts together. holler at me if i forget to respond.

You know, I don’t know that anyone ever has? Or if they did, I don’t remember. I try, though. I try very, very hard. Especially for you, since you seem to really value it? And I like doing things for people that they value. Glad we’re on the same page with the road trip, though.

Oh, I’ll have to check out the butterfly garden. And of course you love the beautiful and deadly ones. Foxglove is lovely though; useful too, not just to kill, though I’ve never been much for herbalist work. Someday there’ll be flowers on the Beast though.

Haha, okay. I’ll yell at you if you forget to respond. Hope you’re doing well.

well, you succeed. youre a fucking brilliant storyteller, salme. it sounds from what you’ve said like youve had lots of practice? and if nobody in all that time told you you were really, really good at it or that you made them smile, well. that sucks but at least i get to!!!

useful AND deadly: the best combination

anyways so part of the deal w/ me and that word is Shit I Will Explain More Later.

suffice it to say that i dont WANT there to be ‘jernos’ here. it’s a burden i don’t want people to bear. but i do want to be the Hero. that is. kind of my whole thing. and i want other people to look up to that, and want to perform acts of bravery and be badasses and do the things that this world rewards, in emulation of their Hero.

so i… i would, and i think the Reachers would agree if they could remember the deal we made, call it a fair trade. i traded for the word. it’s mine now. in exchange… why do you think i built all the train lines stretching into the middle of nowhere? they all have access to the entirety of the Beast, no matter what ridges of earthworks or metal are in the way, no matter how hard it is to clear a path. thats part of my job here. always has been. i make sure they have a market to sell their goods, i make sure they can be part of the story AND live far enough away that im not breathing down their necks and telling them how to live. and if someone here wants to leave for there, or one of their kids wants to come to queenstown? more power to ‘em. as long as i get to be the Hero of the Beast.

this isnt exactly a Big Secret but it’s also not really something most people these days know, so bear that in mind.

hope youre doing well too

Someone probably has. I’m nearly certain that … when I performed as the Sword-Saint, people were appreciative. I just can’t particularly remember. And I know Iikka smiled a lot at my stories, even when I was eight and just making up the most absurd shit. It’s just … again, I don’t remember.

I hadn’t realized, you know, how much I still didn’t know. I knew all the important bits—who I was, the decisive moments that made me, all the knowledge I carry, but I’m realizing now, as I try to put together stories or make sense of things that … as the Sword-Saint, my sigil was a sparrow. We all get sigils eventually—Badri’s was the Sunbeam-and-Dog, for instance. I remembered that the sparrow was my sigil but I don’t remember who chose it, or why it was chosen. I have my guesses, but I don’t know.

Which is a lot of words to say that I’m still missing very many memories and I’m not sure I’ll get them back. I can remember a lot of how I felt, as the Sword-Saint. I don’t remember a lot about specific things that happened. I’m planning on asking Badri. I know I wrote him letters; maybe he kept some. I can’t imagine no one ever praised me. I know I never doubted I was good at what I did. But I don’t remember it regardless, so you get to be the first. Lucky you.

Thank you for the term ‘jernos’—there’s a larger mystery that crosses the five planes that having that term might help us unravel. As for what you wrote:

You know, I do think of what you told me, in response to Badri’s passing on of the Mask, about how you’d have died before you’d let that happen. I thought it was purely an emotional response, but. That’s precisely what you did here, isn’t it? Shouldering every burden you could find. And yeah, using it to fuel your own ego (I’m not going to pretend you don’t have one; I think that would be insulting to you) but I mean when you’re carrying that much, maybe you’re allowed a little ego?

One thing about the Mask that I haven’t told you is that the first bearer thought that it would be the only one. Its name was Bahamut, crystal-eyed, sleek-furred beast, strong and able, maybe even strong enough to leap from one side of Almachadta to the other. And it was supposed to bear the Mask alone and immortal for however long was necessary. But it couldn’t survive the end of the first cycle, and had to pass the Mask on. An echo of it still lives, in the depths of the Mask. I met it, and then Wolf and I visited again, and it was sad—mournful, that it failed.

It seems, to me, that you’re what would have been if Bahamut had been able to endure. It also …

There’s something perhaps ugly in me that’s joyful at the thought of my being the last Sword-Saint, or at least the last Sword-Saint to live with the reality of the cycles. I still. Again, I know I still might have to die. I know that maybe there won’t be a way out. I’m hopeful, I believe more than I doubt, but I refuse to embrace certainty when certainty isn’t a given. But I think right now, if someone challenged me for the Mask, I would die before I let them take it. The end of this particularly history will be mine, and whoever comes after can write a new one. I think. If I had been as magnificent as Bahamut or as strong as you, I’d have tried to make the same choice.

There’s a contradiction here, about trying to value myself more and also the assertion that I’d take on greater and greater burdens. I don’t even want to be seen as a hero—I’ve talked about playing the role of a hero, but it’s just that, a nice lie. I don’t even think I’m particularly strong, not anymore. But there’s something in me that feels well disposed to being the Sword-Saint, almost as if I were made for that role. As much as I have desires and wants, I also want to … serve, I guess? To give, as well as take.

Maybe I’m projecting. I probably am. I can’t tell you what the Reachers would think now—memory is such a fickle thing that shifts over time, and even trades that were fair can come to be resented by people who weren’t there at the time. I’m not particularly interested in judging one way or another. I want to understand the history, and I want to understand you. The rest of it is fairly immaterial to me right now.

Thank you for telling me, though. I am. Filled with questions that I am trying not to ask because I don’t want—I think [Libra] was violation enough, and I know you’ll want to answer me, even if you’re not ready to do so. I really appreciate it though. I hope you know that.

And I’m doing fine. I miss Queenstown, honestly, and wish I was spending less time in this cave system than I am, but. It is what it is. I’m a bit worried about Wolf and Jorule—they had some conflict and I’m not sure how serious it is—but. I’m not someone Jorule would go to with his feelings, and when I went to check on Wolf he was already asleep. It’ll probably work out. I wish, though, that they could see how lovely one another was, I guess?

kinda feels like the memories that you kept the closest are all. pretty sad and fucked up ones, from where i’m standing. i’m sorry that’s the case, and i hope more of the better ones come back to you. and in the meantime i guess youll just have to make more good memories here on the beast with all of your new friends who DONT need to be fed to brontosauruses. probably. provided that jorule is still behaving himself, anyway

anyways

i do feel very lucky about that

bahamut, huh? thats a lonely name. its one ive heard before. echoing through time and stories. before i ever even came here. a lonely name for a lonely creature. glad it sounds like you were able to… find it, remember it, keep its company. tell its story. i know that’s important to you and it should be

i don’t think that’s an ugly part of you at all. im curious why you think so? i think that part of you is beautiful. im also baffled at why you seem to think you are weak? like thats. insane to me but

id tell you to be careful about what you jump into feet first but i already know you’d look twice and do the math so im not worried.

I’m working on it! You know. When I got together with Aurelius, he said something about him starting to think that the future might matter more than the past. And he’s got there already, I think. It was really lovely. And I’m still working on it. Sort of mortifying to think that I’m still trapped there when he’s worked through it so well and it wasn’t even a struggle I identified for myself but. It is what it is.

That’s sort of why I think I’m not very strong? I keep getting caught on my past and I let it inform my present. I get sad or anxious and struggle to trust. I guess I keep getting stuck in the messy bitch mines and I can’t even have some decorum about it. And aside from that it’s—you know, I’m only human. I’m not Bahamut or the Scorpion Queen or the First Endjinn. And there’s nothing wrong with being human, but we are short-lived and easy to break.

I guess it’s ugly because it’s … I mean, of course it’s about sparing someone else, about ending the cycle, about the whole world not dying. But it’s also a little about me getting to be the last, getting to matter that way. About having a story of my own that people keep telling even after I’m gone. I guess … you wouldn’t see that part as ugly, would you? I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a hero; I think that’s a stretch. But being remembered? I guess that’s always been appealing to me. That’s one thing about the Mask—it feels like a way to honor someone, to care for someone, even after they’re gone.

Sometimes I think I’m too caught up on the past for this story.

Hearing this means a lot. Thank you.

Jae, did you and V fuck?

but that doesnt have any bearing whatsoever on how strong you are? do you keep trudging forward step by step and confront yr shit and keep clanging away in the messy bitch mines or do you just flail around in it

and even if you just flail around in it. idk. that doesnt make a person weak. it means they use their strength in a way they might not want to but thats. mm. i really dont think thats weakness i think that just means youre a person.

yeah

this is fucking important

its good and right

if its ugly then its good and right to be ugly

i think it’s beautiful though

that depends on your definition of ‘fuck’ probably it was pr. esoteric

is she telling calumnious tales about me? i hope theyre good ones and i hope i sound really hot and good and cool in all of them

Mostly she told me you actually did successfully grab her ass and that the two of you butt heads when in the same room together. I think you came across as more “incorrigible” than anything else.

Did you know, Jae, that there are gates on each of the other four planes—Almachadta, Samudra, Mu, Valaïs—and they all lead here, to the Beast?

Did you know that you can view the Beast from afar, from space, and see her wreathed in burning gnosis, with metal jutting out of her skin? You can see Almachadta too, on the same azimuth, ripe and bursting with flourishing gnosis. Samudra stretches out below, an infinite expanse of water. We were not able to find Mu or Valaïs, not that first time, but I believe in us.

I think the Beast is alive. I think she eats Almachadta, will eat Almachadta, when all of the moons are gone. I don’t know why the moons are disappearing or what they do. I do know Almachadta burns, but it is also devoured.

I think of the Rite-tone [Inferno]. I think of your lack of written records on a world where paper is plentiful. I think of you, lashed to the world with chains of utter, unshakeable determination. I think of you tempering your own expectations about what you will and won’t be able to achieve. I know you don’t know how to stop it. I know if you could you would have already, because you are the kind of person that stops terrible things from happening.

I wonder if you tried to stop it, whatever “it” is. I wonder all the things you tried—we’ve tried so many, us Sword-Saints. I am an archive of failures.

I want to know what happened 1296 years ago. I want to know about the other bodies you’ve inhabited. I want to know why you can’t see the infinite expanse of Samudra from here, or why I can see the Beast sunlight from where the library sits in the Empty Space in the Sky.

I want to show you that the past matters and that the future does too. I want to prove you have more than the current moment.

I want to help you bear this burden. It’s a burden I know how to bear, at least I think.

I told myself I wouldn’t ask. I said I wouldn’t beg. But here’s this—how about a game? Tell me what you might consider answering, and I’ll try to earn those answers. Let the stakes be whatever you want them to be.

when ive said that failure doesnt mean losing, doesnt mean youre weak, it just means you have more information about what DOESNT work… i mean you learn a lot of things. in the messy bitch mines. i did not used to know that, about failure. i thought if i ever failed, idk that i’d curl up like a bug and die maybe. turns out that wasnt actually the case.

you are so good at using your goddamn eyes, salme, and it’s a real problem (affectionate. laudatory. kind of astounded.) keep observing. see what you see.

if i dont want to give you my own observations at this point… call it because i’m worried about them overriding your own. call it me being selfish and wanting to hear YOUR read on things because it’s different from my own in some way that catches a corner case i might have missed.

how about this, how about i make a promise

face the end of the world

and then come and find me

and if you can do that

ill tell you everything i know

and if you cant ill never forget you

and it wont have been because you failed or werent strong enough

and your sword will be in my throne forever, babe

It’s a promise.

But also. This is why we’re hanging out soon, because if you’re going to remember me you’ll remember me in a million different ways.

Also I just want to hang out but.

We never quite manage to remember people as whole people, do we? I recently … I used to remember Iikka as someone who loved me without reservation, and who I loved in turn. And that’s still true but I recently remembered times when they were impossible and stubborn. It’s a very funny story, actually. I’ll tell it to you sometime. But. It’s easy to focus on just the bright things, or the sad ones. But I want you to remember me as fully as you can. I want you to always carry the knowledge of who I was with you; I want it stamped into your very soul. And it still won’t be perfect but it will be enough.

I think it will be the latter more than the former, but even if we find a way through you’ll outlive me. I’ve been thinking about that too. End of the world aside, both Luĉja and you will have to lose again. And I hate that.

And I’m inspired by the strength it takes from both of you to not let your hearts grow distant.

Anyway I’m coming to the palace tomorrow unless you tell me not to and we’re hanging out in the library and weaving together. You’re also going to help me figure out a gift for Zaya.

There will be snacks.

Question: In the library, it seemed like you were able to … somehow see flows of gnosis? Is that something you can usually do? And is that a trick you can teach me?

i’m not sure if it’s a teachable skill or just. a really stupid amount of experience all things considered. i can certainly try, though. it sounds like archie’s boyfriend made him a thing that sort of shortcuts the whole procedure though so if all else fails, you and he are pretty tight, right? he’d probably make a pair for you.

also, i had a really, really good time in the library. it was really nice.

Hm. Well, it’s not something terribly pressing, Archie has his glasses, yeah. I was just curious how you’d do it naturally, or how you’d even begin to look?

I also had a really, really good time in the library. I’m glad it was nice. I was making several very effortful attempts for it to be nice. Hopefully it’ll happen again. Maybe even soon.

i’d like that a lot!

Hey, I just wanted to … you said, “I’d say you’ve gotten more of me than most people whose Queen I’ve been for their entire lives. You have all that I’m willing to give” and … I wanted to. I think I was going for more “playful intensity” and it probably came off as a demand, and then I got weird and defensive about shit, more for my sake than yours, honestly.

Well, you got to see me being a messy bitch in real time!

Jorule does this thing with the punctuation that looks like faces, but there’s not really a good one to express chagrin? Imagine that I found one that expresses chagrin.

That said, though … I was joking, with the “my Queen.” You aren’t my queen, you’re my friend, and I don’t want it to ever feel like I’m trying to chip away shards of you. I’m sorry if it did.

lmao it’s fine. like. wooo your friends all got to see me being a messy bitch and laugh at me without it starting a Rite they can coast on that one for a while more power to them. still all in the messy bitch mines together

a little bit before the soups situation luĉja came to the castle and we sparred a bit and. talked. and a) they’re pissed at me and i can tell b) it’s fine, we’re both adults, we can deal with it c) i told them kind of without thinking about it that this is a group project

it’s been fucking me up a bit. that i dont know. that i can’t be sure yet.

i’m supposed to be the angel of hope, damn it, not feel all of these stupid things.

anyways. if you can put up with my bullshit then you don’t have anything to apologise for, either.

Luĉja was happy when they came back from dueling you. I didn’t get much of a chance to speak with them, but they seemed satisfied with whatever transpired there. I don’t know if Luĉja is pissed at you; you can probably read them better than I can, but I do know they … believe in you. Maybe in ways you can’t believe in yourself?

That said. Sometimes I find Luĉja difficult. Sometimes I find all of them difficult, because it’s very easy to say that things are going to be different this time when you haven’t had the reality of things not being different this time hammered into you by experience. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe them—every day, every step, I choose hope. But I’m aware I’m choosing hope, and I’m aware it’s not a given.

Awa said something, about “what’s the harm in trying,” and I think there is a harm in trying. I don’t think it’s an excuse not to try, but … it chips away at you, when your efforts don’t yield fruit. Even if you learn from them. Even if you accept the loss. That’s also not a monster you can kill, and perhaps you struggle with it less than me, but. I have tried and failed at many things, and it did not leave me without scars.

You are amazing, Jae, and strong and powerful and skilled; ancient and vast. But you are also, at least a part of you, just a person, no different than me. I saw that in the library. I don’t know why I saw you in such a way, but—that was a true version of yourself too. It could not have been otherwise. Let yourself, sometimes, be just a person. Please.

At any rate, I suspect the Deepforge is where we’ll find the gate—if there is a gate between worlds on the Beast. And once we’re through—I don’t know, when next I’ll see you again. So before that I’d like to spend some time together, though you can choose the activity this time.

Also, did I ever tell you what my Angel is called? I don’t know who titled them thus, but—“The Angel of Tragedy.” You saw a facsimile of her when I showed you Tulinsuojat. I still don’t know what to make of that title, but I thought it might give you a laugh.

At any rate, I can’t do hope without caution. I will either live and we’ll save everything, or I’ll die trying. Let’s make sure every moment up until I find out counts.

when we were talking, aurelius said… “You’ve had how many thousands of years… and you’re not sure.” and i want you to know that if it wouldnt have made you sad i think i would have challenged him to a Rite to make him eat his words right then and there on the spot.

do they think. does he think that i havent tried.

and it’s… it’s fine. it’s fine! i dealt with my feelings like a goddamn adult. and he and you and wolf all had me dead to rights in a way that mattered and i can. be a reasonable goddamn person about that. but do they think i havent tried.

and that’s something i know i can say to you that. i dont know if ive ever been able to say to anyone else in my life, salme

and watching you, watching you find the tight wire between hope and pain, and dancing on it gracefully? i dont know. it’s helped me remember myself, a little, i think. not sure how that’s going to pan out for me but i’m committed at this point.

and for the next couple of days at least we can hang out and have a good time. that counts. grand soups count.

i think its pretty clear at this point that the clock is ticking.

tosch isnt going to get to open up his restaurant

im having the city draw up a charter for it anyways

because it still counts.

I mean, you can challenge Aury to a Rite if you want; it won’t hurt my feelings. Though I think your winning a Rite against him wouldn’t give you the kind of satisfaction you want. I’ve compared Aury to Auxanyr for me. He’s constant and he’s certain and he’s steady and that counts double for when he’s made up his mind.

Though.

I didn’t tell you about when I first explained the Sword-Saint’s secret, did I? It was early, on Almachadta. Aurelius was … early on, he was more Jorule. If you ask Jorule, he’ll say he was all Jorule, but Aurelius has always been Aurelius, even when he was also very much Jorule. Anyway, I had—feelings at that point, and there was potential for something between Aurelius and Awoken and I, and I was out of sorts and I came to them both. They had just finished about the truth you told Annarr, the _{Truth That Burns} and I thought—I don’t know. I thought one of them might have had a way out of the cycles. So I told them about it, and then I—

I started instinctively grasping at methexis early on. I used a wave of flourishing gnosis to connect with both of them and to show them some of the memories kept within the Mask. It was not well-organized. It was me, hammering them, again and again and again with the hopelessness of trying to change the cycles, and my own … at first I was actually really, really scared, Jae. I knew everything ended, but I knew things also began again. I was terrified that if we tried to change things I’d destroy the part that promised rebirth, that it would just be the end of all things, full stop, and it would be my hand that wrought it. I was a coward.

And then Aurelius kind of ripped into me for being foolish, for not being willing to try, and threw some line out about being able to control the overgrowth of flourishing gnosis with controlled burns, like we hadn’t tried, like we hadn’t tried every possible cure to save ourselves. I was so fucking angry I—well. I could have challenged him to a Rite, but I think he probably would have won. It was more satisfying to cut into myself with words, to concede that I was a coward, that I was a wretched, pathetic thing.

It was not my finest moment. It was. In retrospect, a very bad moment. But I still … again, it’s easy to say these things when you haven’t lived it. And you’ve lived it more than I have. The memories in the Mask feel real—I can remember the heat on my skin as Almachadta burned—and there is a gulf of understand that cannot be bridged between someone who hasn’t lived it and someone who has. That’s why—I mean, I like to think we would have gotten along if we hadn’t be mining this same vein of messy bitch ore, but. It means something, to have someone get it. So yeah, you can tell me about these messy, awful feelings, the despair and the anger and the self-loathing for letting it get to you. We can tell each other that. And if you want to really throw Badri, can you tell him too.

Because I know you’ve tried. I cannot imagine the amount of absurd, hopeful, ridiculous things you’ve tried but I am certain you have. We Sword-Saints tried. Maybe not me, not at first, but I’m trying now.

This means a lot. I’ve been trying to dance on that wire and I think it’s only recently I’ve developed any grace at all. And I know if I fall, if I falter, if I fail, it’s going to hurt you in worse ways than if you had kept yourself closed off. Your hope is a gift. And that’s another reason to try even harder. And I believe—I believe that if I fail it will still have counted, and that you’ll remember me, and that. Someday, someone’s going to win, and that having known me, having known all of us, you can maybe help those people really, truly reshape the world.

And yeah. It still counts. I want … I was going to ask about building a greenhouse in Queenstown, because it still counts.

Even if we only have … months or weeks, even if I don’t make it, even if, even if.

It all matters so much.

i dont think that being worried about breaking everything permanently makes you a coward. makes you a sane fuckin person in a way that im NOT, frankly. there are things i’ve done, things i tried, that i SHOULD have fuckin hesitated before trying. for all its sorrow this world we’re in is kind to fools, i think, salme. which is good for people who love fools.

also given that i flounced into a chair like a little bitch at wolf MYSELF literally yesterday i cant really fault you for not telling aurelius to stick it up his ass and give it a twist even if he deserved it. i get it, though. and like. he wants to make things better so much. he wants to win, far be it from me to begrudge him that, lol. you both do, and i’m glad for it

and. every time i say everything we do matters, i mean it

sometimes i feel like i was put here on purpose by some twisted motherfucker to learn how to not win with any modicum of dignity, and if thats the case then stop the blessings already. i think i learned my lesson. and, hell, maybe something out there was listening. can’t know until we know, you know?

in the meantime we just gotta keep doin what we can. even if it’s foolish, even if its absurd.

We made it through the Deepforge to the void. There’s … more stuff I don’t understand at the heart of the Beast. And more stuff I don’t understand in the space through which the Beast moves.

The moons are identical, smooth, and featureless. The Beast and Almachadta orbit … Aurelius called it a black hole? Awoken thinks that black hole extends into the Empty Space.

There are so many fiends in the center of the Deepforge that wait and mourn the mother of monsters. She’s mourning herself. We found a gate back to the void in a cathedral of meat and metal and blood. We looked into Her enormous eye. When the Beast lost its fifth moon, She writhed in pain. Or the Beast lost its fifth moon because she writhed in pain.

Everyone is well, at least physically. I feel like I know less and less every day. I keep trying to put together theories but I’m just not … I don’t know. I don’t feel very capable, and that’s making me a bitch.

Well whatever. Just wanted to give an update.

the beast and almachadta orbit a fucking black hole????? what the fuck? what the fuck. thats news to me, how in the fuck did you figure that one out. you are full of marvels i guess!!! goddess what in the fuck does that even mean.

are you… ok? you don’t sound very ok and if you’re not ok i… well. remember that were both in the mines together. even if you’re continuing on your travels for the time being.

i’ve been feeling like i have almost enough pieces to put together the puzzle for- well. you know how long. i guess ive had the chance to get used to feeling like that without tearing all of my fucking hair out, welcome to the party, we have a fancy fuckin hat

anyways, i miss you, and i hope you get what you want soon. or find something to punch that crunches satisfyingly that always helps me? your mileage may vary

Remember the telescope in the observatory? Awoken has … some techne that lets him work miracles finding things in the sky. We were able to see how all light, secrets, and signals are devoured by the thing Almachadta and the Beast orbit.

I’m … not okay, not really. Maybe I got arrogant, but I felt—I felt like even if I couldn’t fix things I could at least begin to understand them. But I—I think space is amazing, but I don’t know anything about it, and I don’t know how to learn. Maybe Jorule would teach me but I think he’s told me about as much as he’s able to explain himself? Awa and Aury will figure the space thing out, and I’ll find a way to. Do something productive.

As for the rest, I … I don’t know. I’m scared, mostly. Angry, a little. Frustrated, especially with myself. Messy, as you said. I don’t know how I went from … being so fucking happy and settled in myself on the Beast to feeling like this.

I miss you too. I don’t think … I’m getting what I want anytime soon. You know. I never managed to figure out something I wanted to make for Zaya until I was riding the train through the void, and then I knew exactly what I wanted to make. But I have no way of getting back. The gate is in the center of the Deepforge, and I don’t think there’s a way back up. I might … try? I’m making a trip there later. To try a couple things. (I’m still going to make it. It still matters, even if I can never give it to her. But. Still).

Can you tell? With the necklace I made you, when I shift planes, if I’m on the Beast or not, do you know?

I’m not sure I got what I wanted—or, no. I got something that I wanted. I was able to use methexis, to sit with the Mother of Monsters, to meet Her in Her vastness, and offer Her some kind of small peace in return.

I also learned a little bit. She has thirteen eyes. Only one—the one that looks out into The Cathedral—is open. The other twelve are currently blinded by the light that shines down on her. I suspect it might be one moon for each eye? Or perhaps that’s too neat. At any rate, it’s the moons that serve to puzzle Her senses, to (possibly) stop Her from consummating Her terrible hunger. (Do you know where Her eyes are? Do they appear somewhere on the Beast?)

It was strange, joining with Her. I wish I could show you the memory of it. She thought She would destroy me, though I was some small, fragile creature for her to mourn, nameless. She did not understand that I have already given that task to you, and that I was not there for Her to mourn. Did you know you can withstand a lot of fire if you become fire yourself?

She is vast and I am very small, but I am also … you saw it, didn’t you? When we were in methexis in the library? I am vast too. The lives of the Sword-Saints, of all of us, not an unbroken thread—there are pauses and gaps—but we are so much, all of us together. And I showed Her that vastness and that sorrow, and it all fell away and I was able to see … a vision, one of Wolf’s visions, one of Zaya’s, of a holy mountain filled with beautiful fiends. But that wasn’t the point. The point was a small park, and this tiny wren hopping onto my shoulder. She was the wren in that moment.

It reminded me of many things. Of the butterfly garden. Of—when I decided on the sparrow for my sigil. I told you, I think, that I had forgotten, but I remembered then. Badri had told me I reminded him of a sparrow, and I hadn’t known how to take it, not at first—sparrows are common everywhere; they’re on all three planes we’ve visited thus far and they’ll probably be on all five. But then I saw him coax a sparrow onto his fingertip, saw the way he positively glowed at it, saw how happy it made him, this man who had suffered so much wearing the Mask. And I knew then that I wanted—that’s what I wanted to be. A sparrow, maybe common, maybe unremarkable, but able to visit joy (and, despite all that, still able to fly).

It’s nice, remembering things that are pleasant. Anyway, I think—I know, for at least a moment, She felt joy. And I told Her that I forgave Her, for whatever She might do. I spoke as all of Almachadta in that moment, which will be sort of darkly funny if I’ve theorized wrong and She isn’t what devours my plane.

I don’t. I am unacquainted with forgiveness, generally, but. She doesn’t want this—She doesn’t want any of it. And it felt awful, honestly, seeing someone with their volition denied in such a way. What could I do but forgive?

At any rate, I’m not sure I really understand anything more than I did before, but I think this, too, mattered.

goddess damnit i had a reply to the last post mostly written and then a fucking cosmic ray hit the radio antennae strapped to my tits or whatever and i lost it. ugh. im sorry. it was a bunch of ranting and raving about how you shouldnt be so damn willing to sell yourself short tho. and also how you should be nicer to yourself when youre in a good mood and then something happens and youre in a bad mood that just happens it doesnt Mean Something other than that something happened in the world that twisted yr ass which. like. you were in the deepforge that place is ass twisting central. although.

reading the second post and. holy shit? thats.

actually first off: yes. yes, i can tell when you’re here. right now, you’re somewhere very very VERY far away, i assume somewhere in weird fucking kaleidoscope town? i hope youre comfortable there.

now that ive remembered to say that: holy shit, you joined minds with her? im not -surprised- by you doing incredibly bold and cool shit and having it work any more at this point but its still. do you know i spent about two centuries once trying to figure out if it was possible to start a rite against her? it was IMMENSELY frustrating. should have tried mind melding instead i guess!! that’s. wild. youre amazing. and. mmm. goddess, salme, youre gonna fuckin kill me one of these days. if anyone was gonna look her in the eye though it was always gonna be you, i think.

the eyes stuff tracks w/ my suspicions and what i know, though. i haven’t been able to find any obvious physical evidence of her presence aboveground though, no, and i HAVE looked. repeatedly. love a question i can actually give a helpful answer to.

anyways. idk. it feels weird to say thank you for being able to do something ive been wanting to try for a long time but never managed to pull off but i feel like saying thank you, anyways. ive always… its frustrated me. knowing that shes there but not being able to talk to her worth a damn.

but. i love her fiends. even the ones that try to eat everybody. maybe especially those ones. and i love the endjinn. every single time. and i resented her for a really really really long time but now i mostly just. would like to give her a hug and also duel her? so. idk where im going with this.

im glad youre ok.

Sorry about your antenna tits failing you. Maybe you need to make the antennae taller?

At any rate, it’s mostly just that I wish I knew more? Both in terms of the mystery we’re trying to unravel and just generally, about the planes? I wish I understood Ancient or knew how space worked or … I don’t know. I do very well with intuition and empathy but it’s frustrating. And I know that’s what I have my companions for, to fill the gaps in my knowledge, but. I guess I wish there was more time for people to teach me? I really … I can learn by observation but I do really well with a teacher? I guess most people do.

Weird fucking kaleidoscope town? I suppose you mean the void, but yes we’re here, and we actually have beds so we’re not camping out on the floor. It’s kind of strange to not be sharing a room with Aury and Awa, but that hasn’t stopped me from invading their spaces.

I certainly hope not! I’m rather invested in us both living long enough we lose count of how often we’ve hung out, and I’m certain you can count very high.

At any rate, of course you tried to invoke the Rite against Her— that’s your favorite method of communication, correct?

Hm. I think the methexis only really worked because it was methexis, but also because of who I am? If I didn’t have the vastness of all the memory I carry while also being … human, I don’t think it would have worked? It’s also … Wolf and I have been talking about the importance of love in the world, and I am capable of a great amount of love for strange and large and lonely things—perhaps because I am one myself.

At any rate, I’m glad hearing about this meant something to you, and I will take your thanks only because I was more than happy to do it. I was happy I could. Give Her a moment of something other than sorrow.

I’m glad, that you … I think. I think you both love each other? Her love is enormous and I don’t know, but I think She’d love you especially. You both love the Beast (while She is the Beast?) and the people there (I am including fiends here).

Though. Hm. Do you know … what are fiends? I’ve made two (birds, both of them) but I’ve seen the fiends Aurelius makes, and I’ve … Awa made a fiend, and then I’ve met fiends on the Beast. Gnosis and matter and intent but … it seems strange, when I think about it, to be able to craft life (or a facsimile of) with such such ease?

its ok if you killed me id just get better

hey randomly i have a question. is there anything from the beast that you’d be into sharing with other worlds? idk if yall stocked your kitchen from spice row or what before you left. you probably did. but i’m considering schlepping something to the deepforge and trying to make sure it ends up where you can get at it. what an incredibly inconvenient place for the gate to be but w/e we can fix it later.

and yeah. i mean. thats what i meant. it worked because youre you and nobody else is you, babe

‘what are fiends’ is a great question tbh

so you know how, like, one of the biggest differences between something thats alive and, like, a rock, is that living things have gnosis actively flowing through them that you can see if you stare at it hard enough

it turns out that that works in reverse! if you make a pattern of flowing fucking magic that self perpetuates (there are patterns that do and dont self perpetuate, theres a bunch of. basically math but if math were a fun game to play that you can use to sort of visualise this but its whatever) and give it a physical substrate that… vibes right with the pattern, you can just. make something that’s sort of kind of alive, arbitrarily

and people have been doing this for a while

Yeah I’ve been a little upset about the gate. Going back to Almachadta and Samudra is trivial but unless one wants to vacation in the Meat Cathedral, we can’t get anywhere on the Beast. I … suspected it’d be like that. It’s why I was so bullish about spending time in Queenstown.

Hm. I’d like more high-quality malpaca wool. Any forms of metal or gems—that maybe sounds greedy, but they’re rare on both Almachadta and Samudra. Oh some of the wrought metal jewelry and decor, and really finely-made all-purpose knives. Clocks too! We still use candlemarks on Almachadta. Some hides for leatherwork. Anything you particularly love. I’m not sure how you’d get it to the Cathedral—have you been there before? Annarr made maps, and between my memory and Aury’s skills we could probably extend those maps if you need. It would need to be in a very impervious container too, or one or more of us would need to be waiting there—it gets very hot.

Oh.

Thank you.

I. Thank you.

As for fiends … that makes a lot of sense! Thank you. Do you know why certain substrates resonate with certain gnoses? And … hm. Seye told me once about a man from a different world who had you all fight fiends in order to … stop tyranny? The actual plan wasn’t clear to me. But is there a reason the fiends on the Beast seem to want to kill you? Is it just to generate burning gnosis?

Oh! Also since you mentioned not being able to find signs of Her on the surface of the Beast—when we were in methexis, I got the sense of the Beast’s skin binding Her almost like an eggshell. So I think it makes … sense that you wouldn’t be able to see anything.

I don’t suppose you know where the light of the moons come from, do you? From the observatory it’s sunlight, but I got the sense that’s not what it is on the Beast.

hey, you’re welcome. just sayin whats true.

nooo idea about substrates. although like theres an aesthetic vibe to it right? if you make a fiend that looks like it might be about to pounce you and tear your shit out with its teeth theres good odds burning gnosis will be the play. theres a whole fiend categorisation situation that i’m familiar with from before, incidentally, and the five major categories of fiend i knew about correspond to the iconic fiends you can summon up during a rite trivially, for whatever THATS worth, figured you’d be interested in knowing that too.

zero clue where the light is coming from, glad it’s bothering you too. i mean not that im glad its bothering you, obviously, but were in the same confused boat i guess but at least we have good company. it has to be coming from somewhere, right? for a while i thought it was coming from the Beast itself but that makes zero goddessdamn sense, and

yeah i tried to laser one of them once just to see if theyd reflect light from the beast lol

it didnt work

Yeah I am interested in that. Can you tell me more about that?

Actually … Jorule was able once to weave gnosis back into mana once, at least, and we’ve theorized that, at the root, they’re the same. Have you ever been able to use magic from your other worlds? (Once we tried Spark-to-Spark contact but something got in the way—I wonder if it’d work with you and Jorule?)

Okay so the moons are outside the area of the sky that can be acted upon. Could the light be coming from … inside the moons? Like weird round lanterns with … ugh, simulated phases? That makes no sense but what about this does! Glad I have a lot of hair so I don’t miss what I’m tearing out.

Also where the fuck are you keeping a laser, Jae? Aren’t those big?

same place i keep the tits antennas when im not using them

(it was a gnosis laser. like. superannihilate that ate all its oatmeal)

anyways, no, i basically had to figure out magic from the ground up once i got here. i’m kind of… used to having to do that, though, honestly. lots of places have different rules you have to learn if you want to win at the game using its own rules. the Rite is fucking weird, though. i like it, obviously, but it’s weird. never been anywhere that felt this… strictly constrained in some ways but wildly free in others. wouldn’t be surprised if you can get back to mana from gnosis if you try hard enough, though.

i think the light almost has to be coming from somewhere, itd be way too hard and… pointless to simulate phases. why bother? who would it be trying to fool, me?? nobody else who’s here would even know anything different. so. hm.

absolutely insane idea: what if the moons somehow reflect. the light that the black hole WOULD have been casting if it were still a sun

(Oh, well if was a gnosis laser that … still makes no sense to me but I trust you)

Yeah the Rite … used to drive me nuts. I think I said something about that, upstrand—that sometimes I wish I could hurt something, without all the Rite and ritual about it. You know, as a kid, I got really good at biting people with just enough force they couldn’t shake me loose without triggering the Rite, but without so much force that it triggered the Rite. I recently remembered I used that move on an uppity young yeresh apprentice who later turned out to be Wolf. At any rate, I … understand the ritual of it, but sometimes you just want to punch someone in the face, you know?

That … that makes sense. I had thought. Hm. Do you remember the folio about the cosmos in the library that I showed you? There was a bit about the light of the moons—“Round, wreathed in burning gnosis and thick atmosphere, shards of metal and rock piercing through the skin at angles you recognise, haloed with six bright, close full moons, the Beast in all its glory.” They were full from the observatory, which is located in the Empty Space, but they weren’t when Awoken popped back onto the Beast.

Again, silmät (You hear the narration, right? You have to—you laughed when I put that sausage in your statue’s hand) then said, “I described this as the day side of the Beast, and six full moons - and, looking up at the moons you can see, the lit face normal to the direction in which you know to look, light coming, obviously, from somewhere, to illuminate them, and thereby the Beast itself. But there is, of course, no source of light.” Does that line up with how they would look if the black hole were still a sun?

Wait. Black holes used to be suns?

lmaoooooooooo what you BIT wolf???? does he REMEMBER. what. lol, comma, lmao

he probably deserved it tbh nobody is THAT polite and reserved while secretly being a huge battle pervert without having gone through a big weirdo phase

i… huh. huh.

that does imply that. the light they are reflecting is coming from the Empty Space yeah. that’s… weird though because it doesnt match– i had someone do calculations and angles to try and make some sense of things, once. and it SEEMED like… whatever the source of the light was would have to have been a lot closer than that? how could the light be coming from both the. black hole and ALSO the empty space though that makes no sense.

also yeah! that’s what a black hole is. sometimes suns can… die, and when they die they collapse into a single point thats. got the entire sun in it, all that weight, suns are fuckin chonky, but taking up like. a really, really tiny space that’s SO small and so heavy that it pulls everything around it in. even light. thats why its a BLACK hole, thats why light does weird things if it’s near it but not close enough to get slorped up.

but if the sun died then where the fucks the moonlight coming from????

I absolutely did bite him, and I—hm. I’ll write up the story for you. I’ve been trying to compose sonnets while I work and it’s not going well, so I’ll work on composing that story and then type it up for you later. It’s … a good story. Funny, but also meaningful.

So the second time we were in the observatory, Awa did some liminal portal nonsense to send a fiend out through the mouth of the telescope in the observatory. The fiend was able to find me in the Empty Space—it saw, specifically, “a rainbowed cross made of fractally-inverted, bright, vivid eyes, gazing out from the Empty Space” where I was, but when Awa called the fiend home, it was showing my gnosis signature coming from both the Empty Space and the black hole.

Awa proposed the following theory … give me a moment … ah here: “wildly riotous idea. the annex is within a deep cavern of space, folded in on itself. the folding is occurring at the black hole. it’s one big length, compressed at the entrance, ballooning out in the empty space. the empty space itself IS space that is folded in on itself. it’s all one space. but it looks like two spaces.”

I … think he’s right? He sounds right to me, but, as silmät noted, “it relays its flight data to you– including, bafflingly, that it detected Salme’s homing signal coming from two locations simultaneously. Which must have been why it was confused as to which way to orient itself…

One vector, pointing straight at the annex. The other?

Points towards the space around which the Beast and Almachadta orbit.

In half of all possible worlds, it pointed towards the Empty Space. In the other half of all possible worlds, it pointed towards the middle of the system; the fiend seems confused about which half it found itself in… BUT, you know you saw the blackness of the Empty Space behind the shimmering lens-sigil, and not stars or Almachadta or the Beast in the far distance.”

Anyway, I think that’s why there’s two light sources. As for why they seem to come from places where there is no light—the Empty Space isn’t empty, right, it’s full. I’m not sure what that cross sigil is, but it’s on the stained glass windows of the gates we make as well. It shows up in my mind’s eye when I unlock Alethic Rites.

Anyway, either it’s something obscured, or the sun that was there somehow exists and simultaneously does not exist at the same time. Sort of like how the central library windowpane looks out on two suns—the True Sun that loves, and the White Sun of Mu that seems to only be able to harm (there’s a switch; I didn’t flip it to show you the second sun because it’s generally not an enjoyable experience). If there’s two suns, why not a sun that both does and does not exist? (Or … Wolf had an idea about time being … flexible, in its flow. Maybe past/present/future are colliding there?)

How do suns die? Do they just … can you kill a sun, or do they die of … what, old age???

oh shiiiit

i need to think about this for a bit, thats really interesting. thank you.

i think the two of you are probably right, though

You’re welcome, though …

Be sure to tell me what you think when you’re done (rotating) it.

I guess the next question I’d ask is if the light shining off the moons feels particularly hateful or particularly loving to you. I don’t think I noticed anything on the Beast, but now I wish I had checked.

the light shining off the moons is fuckin mid

it doesnt have opinions about anything

no gnosis signature to speak of when light sources almost always do

its something the moons are doing TO it, i’m 100% sure

Are they … filtering it? Like you’d filter befouled water with charcoal??? What the fuck Jae. I thought my inside-out melon world was weird but what the fuck? Those smooth cueball-ass moons are so fucking baffling I can’t deal with it.

theyre pretty fucken wack yeah

The first story I ever learned was the story of the house I grew up in. Generations upon generations upon generations ago, when Oaretsch itself was less village and more a smudge on the road between larger towns, my ancestor Kaleva planted a pomegranate seed.

Why it was a pomegranate I couldn’t say. By the time I lived in the house, entire walls were woven of espaliered fruit trees. Pomegranate, apple, fig, and lemon intertwined made up much of the southern walls. It was always pomegranates, though, that we ate when we celebrated that first seed, and from that seed multiplied many others. Kaleva loved amply, and his love built many rooms in the house, and his children in turn loved many people, and as the house grew, new seeds, new trees coaxed to make room for them all, so did Oaretsch as well.

By the time I was born, Oaretsch was one of the largest towns in Almachadta, though I still call it a village. It sits not exactly opposite where the Centrelight tethers to the earth, but near enough. It is a village of weavers and spinners, of dyers and tailors. Most members of Kaleva’s family were weavers. My grandparent, Iikka, was no different. What was different is by that time, it was only Iikka and I in this sprawling house that had once been brimming with people. Many of the rooms were full of items whose stories hand been lost; we lived in only a very small part of that house—the hearthroom, the atelier, the open-air atrium where we collected rainwater in a shallow pool. Later on, I would realize how strange it was to live in such a large, empty house. At the time, it was simply how it had always been.

However, sometime, around when I was nine, something had started to shift. The village headwoman, Marjaana, was always over at our house. This was nothing new. Marjaana was one of Iikka’s friends, and Iikka had few friends in Oaretsch. I never understood why, at the time, because they treated me as if I were something precious, but in retrospect they were difficult—stubborn, proud, and sharp-tongued. Marjaana was one of the few people who seemed to find delight in that. She would come by and play cards late into the night. But Marjaana wasn’t coming by to play cards anymore—she mostly came to scream at Iikka, and Iikka screamed back.

It was about the house. It was about the village. Marjaana wanted us to move, said there were families that needed the space, and the Iikka was too frail to manage a house of that size on their own. This was not untrue. Iikka was the best weaver in Oaretsch, skilled enough that they received commissions from all over Almachadta. Iikka also had a bad back and worse legs and it had been getting worse. By this time, they needed my help to stand.

I don’t remember the details, really. I was young, and I’ve lost many of my memories, and much of this was overheard conversation. I do remember understanding enough to be scared. I do remember Iikka biting out threats, saying if Marjaana forced the issue they’d burn the entire house down with themself inside. I remember wondering if I was meant to burn along with them. I can’t remember if I asked anyone that, but I might have.

At any rate, they requested a yeresh come and manage the situation. Diana and her apprentice came in response.

I don’t know if anyone explained the yeresh to you. They are carriers of memory from the world that was, and they are peace-makers and wayfinders and warriors. They keep the balance. The yeresh that came was one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen in my life—not just because she was lovely, though she was that, but because she was patient and kind and thoughtful and, occasionally, quietly funny. She was a strange contrast to her glowering apprentice, who spent most of the time sneering at anyone who dared look at him.

I only spoke directly to her once, when she asked me what I wanted, and what I needed. told her I wanted to stay in our home. I told her I needed Iikka to let the healer do deep gnosis-work on them at least once a week. She made both of those things happen.

And for the rest of it, well. She helped us sing life back into an abandoned home with walls made of dead, rotting wood so the overflowing family would have a place to live. She did not wield a hammer as ably as she wielded words or song, but no task seemed below her. Her apprentice also assisted, and though he did not grumble about it terribly loudly, if you were observant it was impossible not to notice.

The whole thing was stupid to him. The village, the problem, the solution. It was just the same thing, over and over again, he said, stupid people arguing over stupid things. He was above us stupid villagers, you see. He was special and could be doing something more valuable. I can’t remember what insult I finally threw at him to make him call me an “uppity little snit” but it must’ve been a fairly cutting one, by nine-year-old standards. At any rate, I bit him.

And then I didn’t let go, no matter how much he yelped and yowled and tried to shake me off.

Diana lectured us both, though got the worst of it—he was significantly older than I was, though I think he was still only in his teenage years. She managed to say something to get me to let him go, which is impressive in and of itself. He huffed and he puffed and eventually they left Oaretsch and I never thought much about him again.

Until, of course, I told this story to Tasna and Duškomira and Xilai, and Wolf recognized himself in Diana’s surly apprentice.

The rest of it is more Wolf’s story to tell than mine. The mortification of being lectured for feuding with a literal child made him do something extremely rash. He only lived because Diana saved him, and after that he was ready to listen—to become yeresh properly. To become who he is today. And I think the arrogance and rashness is still in him, just as my tendency to anger and to biting is also still in me, but. When I told this story, when he told his part in it, he said, “So I suppose, my friend, my sister, I should thank you. For, unknowing to both of us…without you, I would not be the man I now am”

It’s a bit silly, how my heart sang at those words. But also I … for the longest time, I thought that who I was before I became the Sword-Saint didn’t matter. To realize I had set Wolf on his path, even in such a small, silly way—that mattered.

It also mattered because Iikka did get better. Marjaana came over to play cards again. There was an agreement, that if Iikka passed, our house would pass on to a family that would cherish it, and that I would stay with that family if my parents wished me to. Not even two years later, Iikka died and Marjaana’s family moved into my home. She had three wives, and countless children, and they filled a place that had been very still with so much love and sound and joy.

I hated it. It was loud, it was cloying, it was busy. I had spent so much time caring for Iikka, weaving with Iikka, I didn’t know how to be around other children. I knew all the criticisms of my behavior—I played too rough, I spoke too sharply, I had boundless energy that only Iikka had been able to constrain. I tried instead to be good for Marjaana and her family; I was polite and thoughtful and deeply offputting for being both of those things. Even Marjaana kept looking at me like I was some kind of changeling, like she had expected one child and got someone totally different.

I think, in retrospect, I was grieving and scared, but I didn’t know how to be grieving and scared. Instead, I just became small. I think that even if my parents had given permission for Marjaana to fully take me into her family, it would have only lead to sorrow. As it were, I asked to be placed with a different family while I waited for my parents, and Marjaana obliged.

It doesn’t make a huge different, that I asked for that, but I hadn’t remembered until I told this story and it makes some kind of difference.

At any rate, that’s the sad coda to the time I bit Wolf so hard he had to reevaluate his entire life.

first off: thank you for sharing that story with me it is all of beautiful and sad and really, really funny. i think it’s… amazing, that you ran into each other again. i think sometimes for all its… everything, the world really is kind to us like that in ways that arent anything we earn or deserve, it just Happens, the same as the fiends and everything that’s bad Happens

second off: i bet the awoken’s right. black holes are weird. im not and have never been a starologist i have so much other shit to worry about, but like. intuitively it makes sense to me that if something looked like it were in two places at the same time a black hole might be involved in that idk

i think you can probably kill a sun if you try hard and you believe in yourself. you can kill most things if you have a gun big enough. if we had a spare sun lying around i could try to start a rite with it and beat the shit out of it and see what happened but we dont. im pretty sure they can also die of old age too, though, yeah. when it comes down to it a sun is just a weird kind of fire? and every fire runs out of fuel eventually. when that happens to a sun it gets heavier and heavier and denser and denser and collapses in on itself and thats what a black hole is. something so heavy and dense that even light cant escape

idk if thats what happens if you take a sun out back and shoot it tho, again, never tried it

and i dont have a damn clue what it means that i apparently have one sitting in my backyard but i dont much like it i dont think. although i suppose its minding its own business. idk. weird shit, salme.

I think you’re probably right. I think they’re maybe even entangled. I had met Wolf again before we got kidnapped—we were on a mission into the Tangle, to try to—well, I was. I didn’t think we could stop the end of all things, and I knew it was coming. But I had wanted to maybe know, to learn something no one else had learned before so I could add it to the Mask’s knowledge? Anyway, I don’t remember that journey very well, but Wolf was very … not unkind, but. I can now recognize when he’s being a yeresh, and … he was very much being a yeresh.

I’m not sure I would have been able to know all the wonderful facets of him if it hadn’t been for the Architect. And I suppose I’m grateful for that, even if I … well, let’s just leave it at “I’m grateful for that.”

I mean, it seems like it’s somehow a sun and a black hole at the same time? And, if it’s the sun in Mu, then it’s a really fucked-up sun.

We are on Mu now. It’s. Strange. I don’t know how much of the other threads you’ve seen, but things don’t decay, and the world doesn’t seem to cycle. Humans don’t die, apparently—they just turn into large rubies—and Kin (who are these gold lizard people; oh, Xilai is one) turn into these blue crystal statues? Apparently, their God is going to return one day and everyone will awaken and live forever?

But Jae, they’ve been trying to turn their desert world into a garden for about 280,000 years, and they’ve not made much progress. Or. That’s unfair. They have made progress, and I don’t want to diminish that, but if their God is real and still alive, then he’s a fucking dick for leaving them all in the lurch like this.

And the 280,000 years—that’s recorded history. They have books that reach back that far, because nothing here seems to decay. There’s an illness—humans get these strange iridescent nodules on their bodies that cause them pain—but nothing decays. Nothing rots. I looked at the soil in their First Field, planted 279,930 years ago, and it’s all gnosis. There are no earthworms or bugs or leaf mold or anything. The paper in their books doesn’t seem to decay. And I’ve … on Almachadta we don’t use paper for much, but I’ve seen paper that’s a couple hundred years old—it’s not usually in great shape.

I don’t know what to do with any of it. They have something, called a Rite of Renewal, that aligns perfectly with Almachadta’s cycles (or at least as well as I was able to approximate them, and I do think I did a very good job). And whatever this entails it seems to stop Mu from coming to harm.

I don’t think I know what to do with a place where death isn’t a constant companion.

with the preface that i usually think gods are for kicking in the ass

did their god like. fuck off and leave them to suffer? what do we know about the guy? i found the document you made a folio copy of and it’s. interesting but i feel like im missing a fuck ton of context

do they have any evidence that you can turn a lil red crystal back into a person? because like. if you can do that, then their beliefs dont sound TOTALLY batshit crazy to me. are they trying to force you to follow their religion? cause i’ll figure out a way to come over and beat their ass if they are

THIS is fucking weird

we gotta find out what that is and what it means somehow. we gotta.

I knew there was a reason I liked you. But, I mean … I respect the gods of Almachadta but I really don’t ask for anything from them, nor do I try to serve them. This is very much outside my experience. I know Wolf has a goddess he talks about … I may ask him about it? Anyway, the rest of your questions:

We don’t know very much at all. Aury and I at least think that this might be the Zosimos of Mu, but I’m not sure how much of that is a reasoned theory and how much of that is intuition. I think this God could be dead, honestly. I think … I don’t know. I think the people of Mu do a lot to serve a God that doesn’t seem to serve them and I don’t like it. But also I know I have a certain limited perspective here.

Oh you found a way to access the library? Great. And yeah. I haven’t gotten a chance to really dig into it, but from a cursory glance it felt like more was unspoken than spoken.

Maybe they know their God is dead, on some level, and the Work they talk about is … hm. “When the Work is completed, the Garden will not be given unto us. We will have built it ourselves, with our own hands.” It’s a lovely sentiment, in some ways. But it’s also … 280,000 years, Jae. That’s … a long time to still be terraforming a place, right? And it’s inhospitable; massively more so than The Beast. But still, if they don’t have to start over ever thousand years or so, it feels like they would have gotten further, right?

I’m not sure. Jorule thinks it’s a given, but … the way people talk about it, it seems like a hope for when their god arrives, and less a proven fact. That doesn’t mean it’s never happened. I’ve been trying to get a sense of what’s an appropriate question to ask. I think … their head archivist is very friendly with me, and she might be willing to tell me? Ravhi also might, I think. I hope.

Regardless, I don’t know how I feel about not truly dying. Maybe it’s strange, since I’ve been thinking how I’d like to cheat death long enough to do everything I’d like to do, but I feel strange about death not being a thing.

I suppose what I’m saying is, even if their beliefs are well-founded, I would find the idea of death being removed from the equation strange? Perhaps that’s the limit of my intellectual creativity.

No. That, at the very least, is not a thing anyone has done. There are people who don’t—they, apparently, leave the city and live in caves. I’m not really sure why one follows from the other, but … I suppose I understand. Their beliefs permeate every aspect of daily life. I find it … “grating” is perhaps an overstatement, but I’m very aware of how different I am. And that’s a given—I’m not from here. I can imagine wanting to be somewhere else if you were.

But the people really are lovely, however fucked I find the rest of it.

Yes. I have some suspicions, which I hope are incorrect. I really, really hope I’m not right on this one.

i owe you a response to a couple of things in the previous thread but jorule said some unhinged shit and

can you like

give me your impression of whatever the shit just happened to yall id really appreciate it

Hm … Jorule probably wasn’t talking about Awa’s consternation over the lack of lactation, so it’s probably about the Elementals?

There is something on Mu called an “Elemental.” It’s what was able to inflict a mortal injury on Aurelius without a Rite. They initially appear as a mostly invisible wound or a crack in the world. One person, Qarina, who is a human whose soul (or self) is entwined with something called a shade is able to destroy them without a Rite. Otherwise, they must be Rite-bound through a process of naming.

The skill is learned at a place called the Red Pillar, and it is a technique learned by the Rohsu. At the Red Column is an Elemental that has allied with them, though the allyship should not be overstated. The Red Column is made of blood-red, slightly shiny stone with, what silmät described as a “frozen explosion” of blue-green crystal. This is the form this allied Elemental takes. It was especially interested in the Mask, and in looking at it through the Mask I saw a different form as a burning cloud of blue fire with thousands of eyes.

I asked for its story, and it said its story was “violence dealt and watched.” It gloried in it.

I—acknowledged its desire for violence as a true thing. I feel it. I understand. I want, sometimes, to hurt people very badly indeed. And I think. That understanding meant something to it. It said I felt true, that I carried truth. I think it mostly meant the Mask but … hm. Regardless, it had a desire for the truth—to bite it, to feel it, to be subsumed by it.

I intend to go back and speak with it at greater length.

At any rate, we actually did end up fighting several Elementals in the desert. Once Ritebound, they seemed almost … not joyous, but. Happy about it. It was a hard fight. I went down again, and Luĉja ended it again. At any rate, Luĉja was able to cast Libra on one and … this is what we learned:

“There are two things in all the worlds which I fear. This is the second of them. It had a voice, long ago; perhaps you hear it still? Once it lived in the shadow of a tower which fell long ago; it stood when the bargain was struck and refused the opened door, and as such was not slain nor unmade but subtracted from the count of things which are. It carries no name of its own, for its name was the first thing taken from it; today it is named ‘Dust-Drinker’, and in its agony is wrought, not lies, but awful and burning truth.”

The “tower which fell long ago” is … at least, the Ziggurat in the void is not unrelated to it. We experienced a memory, once, of two people dueling at the … apoleia? Right as they were about to die.

I’m not sure what bargain was struck or what door was refused, but the stories in their Rite-tones were …

Unbound Fury: “I AM THE COST OF SAYING ‘NO’.” Mutual Assurance: “YOU WILL SUFFER AS WE SUFFERED.”
Nothing Valued Is Here: “NO HIGHLY-ESTEEMED DEED IS COMMEMORATED HERE.”
An Emanation of Energy: “THE DANGER IS TO THE BODY AND IT CAN KILL.”
A System of Messages: “SENDING THIS MESSAGE IS IMPORTANT TO US. WE CONSIDERED OURSELVES TO BE A POWERFUL CULTURE.”
Eternal Reverberation: “THIS PLACE IS BEST SHUNNED AND LEFT UNINHABITED.”
The Danger Is Still Present: “IN YOUR TIME AS IT WAS IN OURS.”
Sundered Redaction: “[REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED]”
Fulminance: “YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME HERE.”

The best I can tell is that … the Elementals are the remnants of people who stayed when … whatever happened to Mu before it became Mu occurred. I suspect the same event is what made the world so inhospitable and that it remains in effect—the second you stand under the light of the sun you start to degrade. Luĉja is wearing every scrap of clothing they can find to protect themselves.

It’s also … I looked in the archives, and Mu was in this state when the First Cohort awoke nearly 280,000 years ago. The Temple of Mu—a great pyramid—existed, and all the white stone ruins buried in the sand. The rest of the City was built, but these things were always there, as were the Shades and the Elementals. (The Shades, as far as I can tell, are fairly peaceful; Qarina’s brother—the shade bound to her—talks to her, though I cannot hear him. He knows the term “brother” though, and when I met Qarina in methexis, he recognized the Architect. I’m not sure what to make of that).

We’re among the apostates now, though we’ve had little time to talk. Their—I believe she’s the leader, Chaya, she wears a leather coat. This may be a strange thing to notice, but there are no livestock on Mu. The concepts of “milk” and “cheese” were foreign to them—where on earth would a leather coat come from?

Similarly … the Elementals have always spoken to Qarina, and she has always assumed they were lies. She—when she heard the Libra text, she became very upset that this might be the truth. I’m concerned about her, but in case it’s useful, here are the lyrics to her song:

[Attached at the lyrics of Lastu Wahdī Abadan]

She’s watched by the Sundered Wolf, if that is helpful at all.

“The sun is not the sun” seems objectively true—whether what’s in the sky is a sun, or some … distant explosion, some moment of past harm always happening, I’m not sure. It is interesting when read against the Articles of Faith that say, “The Sun that burns above is is a holy relic of the God’s sacrifice.”

It does seem that whoever wrote those articles did, at least, know something about the truth of the Elementals: “That which howls at our threshold was not always voiceless. Pity it, but heed it not.”

thats. fucking wild, okay.

i’ve heard some of those words before, or words very much like them. people have tried to solve the problem of… how could you ward someone away from a place hundreds of thousands of years into the future, if you had to for some reason, if there was some bad juju that you’d buried there that could hurt you if you touch it. maybe its a weird devil rock and you touch it and devils come out, maybe its a way of making energy that people can use that leaves something behind that’s really not safe to touch and never is. i saw a world once where both of those things were true at the same time, even.

and so like… how can you convey /that message/, without relying on words that could shift in meaning over time, and betray the message, and the specific wording on those rite-tones is. hm.

duno what the fuck that means but i think i get why jorule was off his nut about it

if shit was just Like That when everyone who’s currently in mu showed up it makes sense to me that they wouldnt know shit from an ass though and are just going on vibes nobody wants to get screamed at by a weird fuckin hole in the world thats trying to kill you

i wonder why they are trying to kill people so bad, what is their deal

also and this is an insane thing to say even for me but

have you and/or yr handsome and dashing prince and/or aurelius tried to figure out any way to get an image of mu’s sun? wtf does it look like other than “angry and hates you”. it might not even be possible, it might just. be a totally normal star

but it might not be

and im real curious suddenly

One said “YOU WILL SUFFER AS I HAVE SUFFERED” or something along the lines. I. Hm. This is probably not correct, but one of the key words of radiant gnosis is “symmetry.” What could a thing that was subtracted from the count of things which are want other than symmetry?

I have to admit, when I was young and very angry, I wanted people to suffer like I had. I wanted them to understand. I wonder if also it’s anger at the inheritors of the world that cut them out of existence? I think Mu might be the … skeleton of the world that was, in a way it isn’t otherwise.

There’s a song that … a cluster of pearls on Samudra wrote, set to the melody of “Sanctuary,” which has been … Zosimos’ song. It’s called “Against Entropy.”

[Attached are the lyrics to “Against Entropy.”]

The line “The universe winds down” and what you wrote:

And the idea that there was a bargain. Was what we call the sundering done intentionally to solve a problem? And is Mu what is left over from that solution? That thing that is not safe and never will be?

I suppose that’s my working theory. I’ll ask Jorule to explain what he’s working from later, but I want to keep my impressions to myself for the sake of figuring this out. I know as soon as I hear his theories I’ll start looking at them through his lens.

… also, are you implying that my Aurelius is not as handsome and dashing as my Awoken prince? And I just threw the problem at Aury to see if he might have a solution. There’s this paper which can copy a text with a flash of light. I don’t know if that could be used somehow.

obvs i meant yr handsome and dashing prince and/or yr handsome and dashing aurelius, salme

also if you want some ideas as to how to build something thatll help you look at an evil angry death sun with the tools you have available xsai might be able to help you out, i know hes at least quasi paying attention and it seems like the kind of fun problem furballs like to solve

Is … are you stereotyping metahumans, Jae?

some day youll meet that idiot and youll go, ah yes, a furball

anyways uh

hmm. that song being zosimos’ song makes sense to me, i think, although ‘bear witness, iterate’ chaps my ass a lil bit i gotta admit. i’m. hm. goddess damn it i wish i were there right now for a bunch of reasons. mostly b/c i think it’d be fun to explore weird shit with you tbh but also im really really fucking curious

“i am the cost of saying no” also keeps sticking in my craw btw. saying no to what? to whom? what was the rite here and what the fuck were its terms

Okay, well my dashing Aurelius has provided:

[A single picture of the Mu’s sun, as seen from the surface of Mu, just outside the cave network and away from the City, with the sun viewing filter on.]

This. This isn’t useful, is it?

Those are the lyrics Synthesis wrote! Zosimos’ song, “Sanctuary,” doesn’t have lyrics. Just for clarity. I’m not sure how much of the lyrics are from Synthesis’ own imagination (though they could hear the songs in a way none of the non-Angel Starwatched could) or … they said the words came to them in something they might call a dream, which is. Something.

I mean, I think it’d be fun to explore things together to, though … some of the joy in exploring anything is taken away from the sun that hates trying to kill us. The caves have been pleasant so far but … caves.

I thought it was a reference to this: “it stood when the bargain was struck and refused the opened door.” Does that not add up to you?

lmao

ohhhh fair enough. i misread. that’s. bizarre though and has implications although fucked if i know what the implications are. solid point though, and taken

yeah no i’m with you on that one, i just. like. that just makes me MORE curious not LESS

Well I have some more baffling information for you. Qarina’s Libra text:

“Qarina tou Musterion, and her Brother, who had a name in no tongue spoken beneath these suns nor in that which named them; the closest your mouth can carry is ‘Suhaël’. Proof of the theorised capacity for tellurian and sidereal to harmonise and unify. They were two, and are now one, far beyond mere syzygy; a crecheborne human and a willing sacrifice (one of many) who came from afar in order to render aid. Now, they strike and act as one, a living weapon born to break the unbreakable.”

Suhaël is a Shade on Mu. I talked about them a little. They’re mostly peaceful, sometimes helpful. I think. There’s something here about … what, a willing sacrifice who came from afar which are the Shades and then. The Elementals which stayed (which said “no”) and wish to render harm as a result?

Not sure what to do with the “tellurian” and “sidereal” split.

Also.

Your Libra text referred to you as “of the Beast.” Luĉja’s called them “tou Teratourgeion.” Have you ever heard the Beast referred to as “Teratourgeion”?

what the fuck…?

do me a favor, indulge my curiosity, remind me exactly what Libra said about me, i didn’t write it down and im very lazy

one of Qarina and one of Suhaël are of the stars and of the earth, obviously but fucked if i can tell you which is which. i feel like i could make equally half baked arguments both ways

teratourgeion, that means… either ‘monster factory’ or ‘miracle works’ depending on how cheerful you’re feeling right? haha. or ‘fiend engine’ if you squint. or “monster-mill”, as in “monster-mill fathers-forth full-fierce, fathom-fanged”. maybe weve all heard it referred to that way and we just didnt realise it?

I never told you what Libra said because you said you didn’t want to know. Anyway:

“ Jae Carver, the Scorpion Queen of the Beast, the self-proclaimed Hero. This body is at least 4,000 years old - there have been others. Also known as Stings-and-Kills, the Angel of Hope, lashed to the world with chains of utter, unshakable determination. This is her story, and she shall not falter!”

Jae do you know Ancient?? Also. Was “Teratourgeion” ever the name of the Beast? I never got a chance to cast Libra on Zaya and find out if this was a title unique to Luĉja for their being part-fiend or if it’s an old name of the Beast?

lmao oh that would. explain. why i didnt have the information. goddess im dumb

also i feel incredibly called out by that scan text lol. fuck you too, truth!

anyways thank you, i appreciate it

i am really, really, really, REALLY curious what ‘came from afar’ means. can you see shades? like with your eyes? what do they look like?

also im willing to bet a big shiny lucre that ‘teratourgeion’ is the original name of the Beast. i don’t actually know for sure? but im willing to bet. if you’d like i can put Libra in my deck and pick a fight with some poor rando and see what it says

I … you. You’re such a shit sometimes. I literally almost threw up after getting that text, and you … ugh! Why do you feel called out? Is it the main character stuff or the stuff you’re going to ignore about your multiple bodies?

You’re welcome, by the way.

And I can’t see Suhaël except during methexis, but he’s … glyphs? Repeating patterns of glyphs, and then also shadow, but the shadow seems to hang off the glyphs more than the glyphs seem part of the shadow. Apparently, one of the Kin tried to record the glyphs within the shade, but none of them ever repeated.

And yeah, actually, putting Libra in your deck and picking a fight with someone would be useful. Also picking a fight with Tasna, Xilai, and Duškomira would be extra useful, but I don’t know if they’ve gone back to their commune yet.

thats

really interesting

i think i might know what they are

hilariously, if i am right, we called them ‘angels’ once for lack of a better term

but that got too confusing

they used to show up, sometimes. when there was a world that needed them. needed help, was on the brink of falling apart at the seams, and help keep it from falling over, and then they’d go on their merry way.

i haven’t seen any of them for a really, long time. i wonder if, uh. you found where they’ve all been.

Okay. We’re going to have a thought experiment. A role-play, even. You are going to back up and explain that to me again like I am the Scorpion Queen and you are a loyal vassal who’s just returned from a scouting mission because what the fuck.

salme why is your thought experiment weirdly hot

Because you’re oddly attracted to people who can top you. Next.

O my great liege

I do not know whatof the Fuck i speak in truth because i did not at any point Interact with these Motherfuckers directly in any way

but in my Travels i have heard tales of entities such as the ones of which you Speak, and at least once did i Observe one

beings of great Power composed of many Glyphs who would arrive, as one or as a flight, on a World which was experiencing Turmoil and idk Fuck Shit Up I Guess

those who Know More Than Yr Humble And Obediant Dumbfuck have whispered oft that it has been a Really Fucking Long Time since they showed up anywhere and failed to show up in Circumstances where they might previously have been Expected To

holy shit salme im so hopeless at this help……

I mean, you’ll get better with practice. You’re a good girl, Jae Carver.

More seriously, though—when did you observe one? Were there any patterns or meaning to the glyphs? These worlds in turmoil—were they saved?

Is there someone who might know more?

Also are these the same kind of angels as … earth angels that are messengers or warriors for some weird God? I asked Jorule about them while I was waiting on you, and he mentioned that?

it was a long time before i got here. there was a world that was getting attacked by – call them space aliens, hungry things that thought the world would be easy pickings because the world in question was fuckin. swiss cheese structurally. and so they were gnawing away and making it worse. i was on the outside of that one looking in, and just ONE of the glyph things showed up and just. utterly cleaned house. it wasnt the only thing making a difference but id damn well want it on my side. world ended up okay, though, yeah

so like… if the whole flight of them is here? and they’re… what, wandering aimlessly around in the desert, now? how the cinnamon toast fuck does that even happen

i dont have any idea why anyone called them angels in the first place tbh. i dont… i dont think they have anything to do with. any particular world’s story. i think they’re just a thing the universe makes to give people a fighting chance?

im racking my brains over here trying to think of someone i could phone a friend about this

salme is it racking your brains or wracking your brains

or like. something else entirely

They seem to be … absent some of their power? Suhaël has lost a lot of his memories—though he did recognize the Architect when he saw him in my memories. But they seem to struggle to interact with the world? I wonder if … whatever happened in the distant past took their power from them, and they’re what’s left over?

My understanding is that “racking” is technically more correct, but I wasn’t completely literate until I was 18 or 19 so I’m not going to be a language perscriptivist about it.

Hm. Additional question. I know you don’t like to think about this, but:

[Attached is a list of intervals, 216 in total. They range in length, but tend to be clustered at around 1,100 years]

These are the intervals of the Rite of Renewal here on Mu. They match up perfectly with Almachadta’s cycles, insofar as I can approximate their length. I was wondering if, quick yes or no, you could tell me if they line up with the Beast’s.

Also … hm. Have you ever done any work with the combination of radiant and tenebrous gnosis? Have you ever found it particularly powerful?

bet you ANOTHER shiny lucre you’re right about this but like. man.

yep

not personally but i’ve worked with people who held radiant pretty strongly, and like. there’s those two idiot clan leaders, dual tech with radiant and tenebrous is kind of their whole deal tbh even though they wont admit it to anyone

i think… any two kinds of gnosis that can butt heads can be powerful, and i think basically every two kinds of gnosis CAN butt heads. dont know anything about tenebrous and radiant specifically but it wouldnt surprise me if they can do some really intense things together. sorry that’s not super useful as a response :( did you find something there that’s dual wielding em or something?

Yes and no. Everything on Mu seems to be woven with radiant and tenebrous gnosis. Or. No. That’s not right. I haven’t examined the soil, but Archie and I looked at some tree leaves, and … someone wove the most intricate radiant and tenebrous network of gnosis that I’ve ever seen—wove it into a newly-sprouted leaf while it was still a bud. That’s the only way anything grows here.

I don’t work with either too often, though I recently learned to heal with radiant. Can I ask about the “butting heads”? I always feel like the distinction between the two is slippery, which other people have found odd. But what’s the difference between using yourself as a resource in a tenebrous sense and self-sacrifice in a radiant sense? I’ve never been sure.

goddess, that’s intense as shit. no wonder its taken them for fucking ever to get anywhere. i cant fucking imagine.

butting heads… hm. tenebrous and radiant specifically… radiance clarifies, and tenebrous obscures. i think i’m with you that the distinction is a bit slippery, honestly. but the way i’ve made sense of it is, what are you trying to get out of the situation? the tenebrous answer will spend anything at hand including every HP but the last one - ask Jorule what ‘HP’ means if you don’t know - to get what it wants, but it won’t sacrifice itself for the survival of the whole. you weave tenebrousness into a pattern if you want the pattern to survive no matter what - it’s fuckin great for making things tenacious and lasting. radiance on the other hand is good for when you’re weaving a part of a greater whole, an ephemeral and purpose-built flourish within a spell that has a job to do and then there’ll always be more light shining from where that came from.

but they’re both still just different kinds of sacrifice when push comes to shove, and it took me the longest time to get a handle on what that meant, and im still. im not, like, a samudra magic science nerd. yr humble dumbass coasting on vibes over here babe! but hopefully that makes things make a little more sense?

Not to be … slippery about this, but I would argue that a bright light obscures better and more fully than a shadow. And, indeed, sometimes you need shadow in order to render the light more clearly. The term is chiaroscuro, isn’t it?

Hm. That’s a really useful way of thinking about it. I’m still (rotating), and I might have more questions eventually.

Did you know when I made the necklace I gave to you that I struggled most with pellucid? I didn’t know how to deal with my relationship with the truth (very relative) and what pellucid asks for. I don’t often reach for radiance or tenebrosity but I understand at least how I relate to them. Pellucidity is a struggle sometimes.

And I mean … I guess I think understanding gnoses is more an internal process than an external one, in some ways? At least, having a divergent understanding from someone else really hasn’t stopped me from being able to do what I would like to with gnosis.

I do think, I mean, it probably sounds ridiculous for me to chide you for calling yourself a dumbass, but I really don’t think you need to be self-deprecating about this stuff? I often feel out of my element here but. We aren’t stupid because we aren’t Academy-trained or whatever and we have useful insights to contribute.

I’m trying to believe that for myself. I think you should try that too.

thats v. hot of you, not slippery

or well maybe it’s slippery idk it’s definitely hot. and correct i think

you can hide things in shadows for a really long time, though! you can also hide things in plain sight too though and that often works just as well. it IS slippery! the gnosis is whats slippery here. oops all land-eels.

that’s, huh. i would not have guessed that, honestly. you seem very- not cold or analytical at all but. hm. maybe im used to the way people on the beast get pellucid at this point and thats why i looked at you and was like, shes got some pellucid gnosis kicking around, yep. i totally get what youre saying, though? but like you spend more time productively thinking about whats true and whats true to/for you than like. most people ive ever known tbh

also i only call myself a dumbass when its funny dont worry i dont actually mean it

You can also, as I’ve recently found out, hide things in a mirror.

How do people on the Beast get pellucid?

I’m not sure if I’m necessarily always productively thinking about what’s true and what’s true to/for me. I’m sometimes spinning my wheels. I’m often spinning my wheels. I try to stay busy and stay outside my own head and wind up there anyway. Messy bitch mines again!

And I guess you can call yourself a dumbass when it’s for a bit. And when you’ve legitimately been a dumbass.

goddess knows its gonna happen i might as well make it funny

anyways hmm.

there’s an angle on pellucidity that i think overlaps nicely with both burning and tenebrous approaches to shit. acting in a pellucid way means you want to be less wrong about the world, it means you want to -win-. youll hold fact in one hand and heartfelt emotion in the other and if you go down you go down swinging

thinking about. monster hunters who will spend weeks learning and tracking a fiend before a hunt. thinking about all the people who spend their lives trying to figure out the best and most efficient way to use monster parts. thinking about… i mean, zaedulf, steel row, everything we ever build on top of the shoulders of what the beast gives us to work with. you cant do any of that without pellucidity i dont think. so its not… taking things apart into their bits to see how they work exactly, although there’s some of that.

and it feels like you… do a lot of that? like you’re not a machinist, but you still have a machinist’s eye for detail in complex systems with lots of moving parts? just. the moving parts are more… people and what they think and why? i think that still counts, though. idk

I’m trying to decide if I think being less wrong is about winning to me? I think … I have goals and ambitions. I have a lot of them, actually! But I don’t know that I’ve ever particularly felt like a desire to win, or to be the best, were among them?

Or. They are, but winning often looks different to me? Learning something I didn’t know or making someone laugh or helping someone through something difficult—those are ways to win, to me. But I guess that’s sort of what you’re talking about. It’s not about competitions, or the Rite. It’s about winning against yourself. Achieving your own goals and ambitions.

Thank you for the comment about understanding people. That’s very kind. I realized recently that I’ve been a bit of a judgmental dumbass, and it hasn’t been a great feeling, but. I mean. I’m not angry at myself for it, just a bit embarrassed?

Can I ask you something? If you had to pick between knowing a horrible truth and not, what would you choose?

being in the messy bitch mines is mortifying sometimes salme you come out covered in messy bitch dust

but then you look around and all the people you care about are, too

and yeah ‘winning’ doesn’t always - and this is ME saying this - mean winning a win-or-lose against another person. its just the most fun when it does

id always WANT to know

i assume this is like. part of why we get along so well tbh

not knowing means i can get caught flat footed when it matters

if its whats true its what im already dealing with anyway its not like knowing it will suddenly change the outcome itll just mean i can make better choices

here to win baybeeee

I think we have different definitions of fun, but we’re also different people and that’s all right, I think?

Hm. What is not knowing didn’t actually matter? What if … what if it was something you believed in, and that thing was a lie? But believing in it wasn’t hurting you; it was maybe even helping you? And knowing would only mean you didn’t have that comfort?

I’d still choose to know, personally, but I think a lot of people might not?

(Don’t worry I’m not planning on yelling any terrible truths I just. Hm. Am trying to understand something about myself).

is libra text incredibly stupid sometimes for you

im still thinking about what you said btw. managed to phrase that in EXACTLY the way that made me think really really hard about it and start funching

i think if believing something was giving me an advantage, and could never be a liability on account of being a false belief

id probably still want to believe it

but it’s hard for me to imagine a lie not growing the extra letters and becoming a liability yknow? thats just how it works

Libra is sometimes … a little silly, yeah? I’m not sure I’d call it “incredibly stupid” but Luĉja Libra’d a glass shark once and it was … something. Of course, I kind of have a vendetta against those things so. Anyway, I’m guessing you were finding out some truths?

… and yeah, I mean, it’s a hard question I don’t have an answer to. Or, I do, for myself, but I don’t know what other peoples’ answers are and. I want to know. Of course, the kind of people I’d ask are all weirdos, so maybe it’s not a good sample size. I’ll toss it to Caion.

Oh. By the way, if you’re inclined to do so: I know I’ve mentioned my friend Qarina a bit? She’s pretty young, going through a hard time, and has never had a lot of friends. I was thinking, if you had some time, you might poke her in DMs? I don’t know if you two will get along, but she loves to fight and almost took me out in one hit in the Rite. Maybe watch the weird meta stuff; she’s … probably and Angel, but she doesn’t know what that means and her world’s been rocked enough but. I don’t know.

ya they were both “tou Teratourgeion” and also libra read them both for filth so hard i lost my concentration laughing and let them get some good hits in

wasnt as good a fight as either of my fights against you though

weirdos always have the best answers to weird questions its right there in the them being a weirdo

also anyone who loves to fight and can give you a run for your money is automatically cool in my book. and yeah between you and shijin and jorule im calibrated pretty hard for Weird Bullshit on here but i can take it down a few notches for ya

… Did you fight these guys? Thanks for the data, though, by the way.

And of course it wasn’t as good of a fight. I literally made a deck to fight you specifically that second time, and the first time you had a whole fucking series of several moments.

And thanks. She’s … she’s strong, but I don’t think she should have to be strong in “dealing with meta shade shit” right now.

Have you figured out who Shijin is yet? I noticed you two were talking.

lmao yeah i needed to ask them for a favor anyways. also if i make them spend enough time directly interacting with each other they’ll end up just making out in front of the goddess and everybody. theres a whole castle betting pool on when that entire situation explodes and i cant let zaya beat me to manipulating the situation so that she wins

as for shijin i know where hes FROM although its a world i never spent any time in. kind of an amazing shithole tbh. he immediately paid me the compliment of mistaking me for a badass warrior lady from his world because i beat him in a poetry fight though so i felt pretty good about that. hes the one hanging out in wolf’s head, right? i bet he’d like the beast a lot. seemed like wolf was enjoying himself here for that matter

I think he liked the Beast a lot and that’s why he kinda started to show up. He’s … I like him. Wolf had some mixed feelings about it, and since I’m … I mean, I’ve got Something going on, but I think I’m the only extant Aspect of my Spark, so I wasn’t much help there but. He’s a lot like Wolf, and completely unlike Wolf. He was nice to talk to.

Wait. You do poetry too? You let me give you that longass poem and never mentioned you do poetry?

i like him too. i was having fun having a poetry fight with him, and then i implied that i sort-of knew his world and i think i scared him off. he seems nice, though. vibes of would want him on my side in a fight but that’s. that kind of goes without saying for any of you six and anyone or anything in the passenger seat with its face hanging out the window

also my liege i must apologise i was remiss in my duties. although to be fair i dont really like. do poetry unless someone challenges me to a poetry fight and that hasn’t happened since uhhh the second time i talked to zaya i think? its not something i do very much on my own or left to my own devices. but i do love poetry a lot. and i love the poem that you wrote me

The … passenger seat with its face hanging out the window?

Zaya challenged you? Who won?

there are worlds where people have. really fast wagons and/or tiny personal trains except they’re on wheels instead of tracks and they’re really stupid honestly, trains are just better in every way

and it turns out dogs goddam love riding in the passenger seat of something going pretty fast with their face sticking out of the car

must feel real nice i guess idk last talking dog i knew wasnt on a world that had cars so i couldnt have asked

technically nobody has won we just keep pausing the game and starting it back up again. im winning tho and we both know it

That seems like a good way to have a lot of wagons running into each other? … and you’ve known a talking dog?

… hm. Curious what Zaya’s perspective is there.

What kind of poetic forms are you most comfortable with, Jae Carver?

it is a GREAT way to have a lot of really heavy wagons (made of metal! did i mention the wagons are made of metal.) running into each other and other things it sucks it’s wretched

theres a version of the same thing where - fuck do they have. have you ever seen a thing that’s. like two wheels in a frame attached to pedals, with a seat on the frame, and the pedals are attached to the wheels through complicated shit and chains and shit so when you pump the pedals with your feet the wheels spin fast? if you havent you should invent it on your world and make a million lucre

anyways you can use the same mechanism to make a fancy version of one of THOSE go insanely fast and that is ALSO pointlessly dangerous but at least it’s FUN. i’d like to take you on a motorbike ride sometime, that would rule ass, i wonder if i can get zaedulf to figure out how to build me one

also yeah i knew a talking dog once. he did war crimes in a past life. it was a whole thing

also i like haiku and tanka cycles. something about having to express your thought in the time it would take to swing a blade…! it speaks to me.

Okay the … pedal-frame thing seems. Precarious? We don’t have the roads for it, really. Even wagon-trips can get kind of bumpy.

Oh! Though a motorbike … I was going to ask how that was better than a car, but I think I kind of get it. I tend to like walking just fine (though I did like the trains on the beast) but I’d always rather ride a swift than a take a wagon. Which. Do you know what swifts are? You’d probably like swifts.

What.

Also what are haiku and tanka? Shijin mentioned the first, and then talked about syllabic poetry. I’m not familiar, really. I’m used to working with meter.

Also Jorule said something about asking you about cups of wishes?

its kinda precarious but you get used to it. strap a big fuckoff engine to it and its hella precarious but its also cool as shit, that makes it worth doing

yeah!! yeah you see the vision

what are swifts? the name is pleasantly evocative and you have my attention

haiku is a kind of poetry where - theres a bunch of different definitions to it, the traditional one in the language they were composed in originally, which i think is also shijin’s first language, is “one line of 5 syllables, one line of 7, and one line of 5”. the constraint is gnarlier in other languages but thats the spirit of the thing. you’re supposed to mention like. the weather? i think to me the real heart of a haiku is that it’s a poem you can recite in a single breath. i think thats the important part.

a tanka cycle is when one person writes a haiku and then someone else writes two seven-syllable lines that continues or responds to that haiku and then the next person writes a 5/7/5 that continues or responds to THAT and then you repeat until everyone gets bored and walks away

also tell jorule he should be careful what he cups of wishes for

Swifts are … hm. Oh wait. You’d know what a weasel is even if you don’t have those on the Beast. At any rate, a creature like that, but large enough to ride. They have antler like a deer, but those antlers turn into to flowering branches, and riding one is a bit like becoming wind. My hair is always hopelessly tangled afterwards, but it’s always worth it (and, last time, I had Awa to carefully help me work the knots out. It was nice).

Hm. It might be fun to try? I really haven’t worked with syllabic forms—it seems strange, but “strange” is also okay?

And if you want to be snarky at Jorule you can do it yourself unless you guarantee he’ll be funny in how he reacts.

holy shit

that sounds fucking adorable what the fuck

and also maybe even cooler than a motorbike

Archie got really into them; I think he made a tiny one out of gnosis for Caion? If … if/when we get back to the Beast, I can ask him to show you? But yeah, they’re one of my favorite things about Almachadta.

determination to figure out a way to use jorule’s stupid fucking gate to visit almachadta rising to heretofore unprecedented levels you have blackberries AND swifts

I mean, maybe figure out how to move Jorule’s very useful gate to which I am quite grateful out of the meat cathedral so we can go back to the Beast? And I mean, I’d be happy to have you visit. We just have to make sure travel doesn’t rip people’s memories out of their heads.

Your impulse to look at the sun in the sky was a good one, because it absolutely isn’t a sun. What it is is beyond me, though.

[Attached are each of the precise descriptions the Glory provided of the images Salme & the Awoken took of the “Sun” in Mu’s sky]

You kind of dodged this, but don’t this time: You can hear silmät, right? This is important, because silmät couldn’t see these. And when I tried to explain them, they couldn’t hear me either.

I tried to talk with this sun once in the library. I want to try again. Any ideas on how to do that?

what the fuck of shit of hell of ass is that

I HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE

yeah i could hear the happy lil voice in the sky following you guys around it was weird af

has it ever not been able to hear or see anything before?

what happened last time you tried it? i assume something went wrong. i also love that youre the kind of person whos like oh yeah ill just talk to a sun. unironically. you’re great

It has … yeah. The Truth That Burns and things that involve the Truth That Burns (which is the thing that you told Annarr, if that’s not what you named it). Some fuckery happened to specifically avoid sharing the Truth That Burns that seemed mostly to be an Aurelius/Awoken thing, though when we were finally discussing the Truth That Burns, silmät seemed … vague, and eventually disappeared for a while.

They came back, eventually.

Anyway, the sun in the library can toggle between what we call “The Loving Sun” and “The Angry Sun.” When Aurelius and I first made the library, we saw the loving sun, but when we tried to re-enter, I was blasted with the full light of the angry sun. It does harm without initiating the Rite, and it does a lot of damage. It almost killed me within a few moments.

holy fuckin shit :/

uh. hm

hmm.

well, i want to fight it now but thats not helpful to you right now

actually what happens if you engage it in a rite, have you tried that

that might be really fuckin dumb but i mean when has that stopped either of us

I think, like the Mother of Monsters, it’s probably too vast and too—caught in its moment to engage in a Rite?

annoying.

be careful, okay?

I mean. That’s definitionally not careful, but I’m going to check in with. People. Before I do.

that counts as being careful!! have an escape hatch, be ready to bounce if you gotta. have a spotter, maybe, who can pull you out of the fire if you start to look crispy, although idk how that would even work in this case so maybe nevermind that

I’m going to wait to talk to Wolf, who’s done this before, before I try anything, so update on that.

Other interesting update: I told you about the shades here, that you said were these … other angels that were made of glyphs, that used to show up when the world was in danger and were very powerful. You should read what I had to say in this post where I talk about the stoicheia. I think. I think I have a fairly solid theory here.

I’m not sure, though, what it means.

Also how’s talking to Qarina? I really appreciate you reaching out. I keep trying to think of something I could make her, but I don’t have a particularly good idea.

if i were about to do something insanely dangerous and i could get wolfs input on it first i probably would, sounds like a good play. especially if hes done this before which a) what? b) knew there was a reason i liked him

oh, hey, i’m glad what i said was actually useful. also i’d eat my hat if you’re wrong. id go down to spice row and commission an edible hat and then eat it. im not sure what it means either other than that what were dealing with is somehow even gnarlier than i thought it was previously, which is pretty exciting

also, and i didnt think to mention this before, but i know that. attaching themselves to humans or some other sentient thing is a thing those things could do, that was their usual MO tbh, particularly to not upset the balance of a world too much in the course of helping it i guess. which implies that if qarina is… a person attached to a shade that they can STILL do that, but have… only done it once? that’s bizarre as hell to me.

anyways speaking of qarina thanks for putting me in touch. she’s great, i think she’d get along amazingly on the beast tbh

although like. her world doesnt have any concept of markets or money at all? fucking wild

Oh. Yeah. I don’t know the precise details but … there some something (someone; he’s having a very romantic fated-lovers sort of thing right now) compelling on Mu that led him to make some choices and try to figure out what was going on with Mu’s sun. Of course told no one. We found out because of the library guest book.

Of course what you said was actually useful? I would have no context to even begin understanding the shades if you hadn’t told me that.

I guess what I want to know is how and why the split happened. I’m also curious … about Qarina and Suhaël. My understanding is that Yazhn Ravhi, the overseer of Mu, is the one who created her and her brother, but I don’t know what he did to make it happen or why it worked. I was planning on asking him.

And I’m glad you guys are getting along! She’d do great on the Beast I think, yeah. She’s really devoted to protecting people and used to fighting alone. I wish she hadn’t … gotten so used to it, but what can you do.

Oh. Yeah. The apostates will barter for things, but in the City things are just freely given? Which, I mean, Almachadta isn’t unlike that in some ways—we don’t have lucre, for instance—but you certainly did have to barter there as well.

oh my goddess?????? im going to go ask shijin to spill the tea immediately

he wont, but itll be very funny

anyways, i knew i liked him

also i say LOTS of things i barely expect any of it to actually help. its nice when it does though

and yeah like when i thought about it for a second given that there are only ever exactly as many people as the kin want there to be and it sounds like they sort of definitionally have a ton of control over precisely how many resources there are it. makes sense that everyone just gets everything that they need in the city

just weird as fuck to think about

Okay but if he does tell me? I want to know too.

And of course you liked him. He’s good in a Rite and he’s one of my people, and I have impeccable taste.

Oh, can you … when you said the glyph-angels can join with another living thing, can you explain what you mean by that? Like … is there that big of a difference between Angels and whatever these creatures are? It starts to sound less and less like there is, honestly.

Yeah they do. One of the first things they built were the city walls, and I initially found that strange because the Mask is lousy with towns and villages overrunning their walls, but it didn’t happen in Mu and I was initially a little flummoxed but then realized it was because the could precisely control their population.

Oh. Quick question: On the Beast, how different is the language you speak now as opposed to what you spoke when you first arrived? Does it change or shift?

And. This might be a question I have to wait for the end of the world to ask (though I … don’t think it will be long now) but. When the Beast cycles, does … everyone die like they do on Almachadta?

theyre definitely not… hm. im not sure exactly what the right level of bird shit to be on here is because ‘they’re not people’ isn’t really accurate at all but it’s. argh. they’re not like you and me. they’re constructs, although i’m not sure who or what constructed them. they… care? very much? about what happens but. not… like you or i do, or like caion or zaya does. from what i’ve heard it’s like they care because it’s their job to? its what they do, theyre Things That Give A Fuck

quick answer! its pretty much the exact same. my fault. royal decree. too much of a pain in the ass to keep learning new slang unless i introduced it in the first place and im too lazy to do that

dont have to wait until the end of the world to ASK any question silly you obviously just asked that question right now its whether or not ill give you an answer thats the question!!!

anyways yeah only my throne and i make it over in one piece. i kinda feel like you know that already in your heart so i dont mind saying it.

So they’re … people, but they’re people who serve a specific function, which is Giving A Fuck? And they don’t … hm. It’s not like I give a fuck, but also want to go on dates with my boyfriends and make friends and find a place that feels like home and all sorts of things? It’s like Giving A Fuck is the one thing they do? Does that … am I reading you right here?

I was sort of wondering … starting over, after everything, has always seemed … I mean, that wasn’t the role I got. The possibility of it all seems amazing, but the work of it is … daunting. Setting up schools and systems of education … ugh. This isn’t worth dwelling on.

Oh. Well. Okay. I guess that’s something? And that’s what I suspected, yeah, but I’ve been trying not to rely on assumptions. I thought Mu also went through cycles and it doesn’t. I also thought the sun would be radiating radiant energy, and it’s only the irrica triad.

Oh. And the growths humans get from the sun-sickness. Those look like irrica too. I haven’t—between the mysterious letter from the distant past and the corpse-sun I haven’t stopped to think about that too much, but. That’s something.

theyre people in the sense that theyre. like. ugh im bad at this. like you know how endjinn are fiends but they are also people? not just in that they can talk and hang out and fight alongside us but like. they. matter? in a way that fiends dont? theyre not like. machines or animals or anything else that you should treat nice because it hurts your fuckin soul if you dont. theyre People

but giving a fuck is the One Thing They Do yeah they dont go on dates or have boyfriends or. anything like that. which. ugh thats more relatable than i care to admit honestly ugh

anyways

nah its a fucking lot. idk being the sword saint, ever, is a fucking lot, right? like i dont think theres ever any Being The Sword Saint that isnt daunting?

that’s. hm. wtf.

hmmmm.

man. thats. does that give you the wibbling jibblies too? idk why but that creeps me the fuck out. idk. man.

Okay I think that makes sense? And I mean, I’m not sure I have a good grip on “personhood” either, really. I met some fiends in the Deepforge that … hm. Felt like people to me, in some ways? But we have sapient monsters and trees and rocks on Almachadta so I’m not sure … I have a particularly reliable standard here.

I mean you have a really awesome, cute, beautiful woman you sort of co-rule the Beast with? Maybe take her on a date? I know you’re not big on labels but … it’s the end of the world, Jae. Go on a fucking date.

And …

It absolutely does and I don’t know why. I haven’t … I didn’t. Hm. I don’t know how inclined Qarina is to peruse the library, or any of the other people from Mu, but I haven’t accessioned the memories concerning the corpse-sun yet because I don’t want someone from Mu to stumble across it without being prepared to see it? I can see it being validating to their faith but also it’s objectively weird and creepy.

At any rate, because I’ve yet to accession those memories, I haven’t commented on the growths being irrica and. I don’t know what to think about that? Irrica itself isn’t harmful—I’m fairly certain of that. Irrica growing out of people’s bodies? That’s odd.

Long-term exposure to the flourishing/burning/pellucid triad coming from the corpse-sun causes it and. I just don’t know what to make of it.

yeah, i have been, actually. its been nice. i’ll… ugh. don’t worry about it, im fine i was just having a sad.

cool great that makes two of us at least im in good company :/ appreciate the information though.

Ah. Sorry for being flippant then. Do you want to talk about it?

naw, you’re fine. it just falls into the category of ‘things i hope very much i get the chance to talk to you about eventually’. i’m good.

I have several updates for you. I will hopefully have more soon.

First, we found the heart of the corpse-sun beating in a cave in Mu. I don’t know if it the cause of the stasis field, or an effect of the stasis field, but it’s there. It is trapped in the moment of the sundering—I don’t know if you can use Zaya’s tomestone to view The Corpse-Sun of Mu but there might be some interesting details there. The party seems split on whether to try to convince whatever this thing is that it’s well and truly dead, or trying to repair it and birth the sun anew.

I don’t know what I think, aside from we don’t know enough.

I haven’t yet had a chance to try to communicate with … whatever is happening here. I’ll be honest. I didn’t react well. I—it was like reliving the world-deaths in the Mask. Wolf is going to help me but we haven’t had time to work out a plan. I’m not sure when or if we will.

I do have some more information about your glyph-creatures. Confirmation that the shades and the elements were once one—I was able to talk to one that has been … hm. Made complete, in some sense? Their name is Algol, and they seem to have been split when the sundering happened (they calls it “The Lie” though I’m not entirely sure why—was it having their ability to carry out their duty that made them into a lie?) and it cannot recall what the sundering was like. Indeed, I tried to help them, and I was informed that “it would take a miracle”—words I’m very tired of hearing.

They are in two parts. They were made whole again somehow but the part of Algol that is power (and it’s a level of power I cannot touch or comprehend; I would immediately incinerate myself) has become … cruel. I fed it memories of the death of Almachadta to get my answers. Maybe I will feel sick about that later. For now it is just a thing that needed to be done. It has become cruel, but not all of Algol is cruel.

They were rejoined by a Kin wearing the shade portion and walking into a mouth of the elemental portion. I’m not sure, in retrospect, if you need to identify the correct parts to merge them together—I don’t know how you’d begin doing that. It killed the Yazhn who did it, and Algol is crystallized in a column. The crystal is the Yazhn’s corpse, or what’s left of it.

I don’t know. Perhaps you can make something out of all of it.

Tell me. Do you know if it’s the Beast that eats Almachadta? Could it be this corpse in the sky or something else? I’m trying … you may not know, but I have to ask.

oh, shitting hell nipples salme that sounds awful for you to have experienced and i’m sorry.

for what its worth i think youre incredibly badass for. a lot of things but dealing with all of that and then immediately going and talking to a - i assume that algol is or… was… or is most of? whatever you call one stoicheia when its at home? not like i have a better word for them. jorule has decided to call them ‘celestials’ and is also deadass convinced that the sun in mu is or was one of them which. seems insane to me from what ive seen and heard from you but hes there and im not so maybe??? what do you think

feels like a bunch of yall gonna sprain your ankles jumping to conclusions tbh.

anyways i… really wish i could give you a hug right now tbh. can you. do they have nice baths there? they have to have nice baths there, they call themselves a city. if they dont have nice baths theyre not a city. have a nice bath ok?

and

mm

its

definitely the beast that does it, yeah.

i’m sorry.

i hope that knowing that helps you, somehow.

It wasn’t ideal, but I mean. I don’t think anyone was having a good time. I think the worst thing, the thing I’m most angry about, it that I spent. So much time preparing myself, telling me that it was a completely different context, that it wasn’t like the shrine on Almachadta, and then it … was. And I. Was angry. That I lied to myself. And I was upset.

I’m sort of tired of feeling like everything in my life is just an echo of shit that happened so long ago nothing but a beating crystal heart frozen in time remembers.

I mean I’m not badass. I was mostly running away from the others. I still don’t know … what I want out of that. I’m staying at a nice place in the city. I think it’s a brothel? But the baths are very nice, and if it is a brothel it’s an upscale one.

I don’t think the corpse-sun could be a stoicheia? For one, it has wings, and the stoicheia don’t. Second, when I was in methexis with Algol, I got a sense of what the … elemental part of them was, and it was many, many, many hands and eyes and feet but it wasn’t a body in any comprehensible sense. Also … all of them got ripped apart. Why would there be a special one in the sky? Also I’m not really sure they’re that large?

I mean, I know Jorule is operating on some special Knowledge about whatever is going on on Mu, so he might have insight I don’t, but it doesn’t match up with my observed reality.

Also … thanks for confirming.

I was nearly certain.

I. I told Her that I forgave Her. Speaking as Almachadta itself, which … perhaps isn’t my right, but I think. I think more of us would have chosen that then less of us.

It does help knowing. It means I don’t have to entertain theories that it’s something else that does it. I don’t know if. Knowing I was right feels like much of anything. It doesn’t change anything though, I can tell you that. I was almost certain.

It … must have been hard, with me specifically, huh? To talk about it and know that. Since, you know, we talked about it so much.

I wish I could give you a hug, I guess.

nah youre a badass youre not gonna win this one, i dont lose fights, you should know this by now

i dont think you lied to yourself??? i think thats a fucked up thing to think. you had no way of knowing what the fuck was going to be down there. and i dont think… this is the Exact Same Thing as what happens to almachadta either but it sure as fuck. echoes. echoes of echoes of echoes etc. etc. lets both punch someone in the face about this when we get the chance ok? but until then im glad the baths are nice.

ty for the sanity check. also jorule talks a big game but he doesnt REALLY know shit from an ass either. like if he says something weird im actually going to be like, maybe it is me, maybe im the dumbass!!! which is not an honor bestowed upon many. but.

i. that’s. i think thats really… after everything, i still dont know MUCH about this stupid world but i know that she doesnt want what keeps happening to happen. and i cant speak for her but i think what you said probably mattered a lot. it did to me, anyways.

wish we could both give each other a hug. hang in there

You’re right. It wasn’t the same but it echoes in a way that. I found hard to look at. Wolf and I had planned … to try to communicate with … it, or the corpse-sun, or something, but I’m not sure I can. I need to try to figure out a way to do it, I think, because I’ll regret it if we leave and we didn’t try. It’s just. Hard.

And the echoes really suck. I mean, it’s how I felt about the whole reincarnation thing? Like I found a way through it, but. Just patterns heaped on patterns, and it’s … I don’t know. Sometimes I’m good at holding hope, and sometimes I’m just really angry.

I mean, Jorule … does talk big game, and I think I’m probably better at putting together a bunch of the tiny building blocks very meticulously, but he does have a way of seeing things that can recontextualize everything and I find immensely valuable. Sorry I know I don’t need to defend him to you, of all people, I just … he’s been a really good friend lately and he’s almost always willing to discuss theories where nothing makes sense.

As for. The Beast.

At this point, would you be willing to tell me how the process works? How Samudra fits into it?

And I’ll … when we see each other next, and I am certain we will (can you see the OST? Hm…)

[Attached: List of Disc 1 and Disc 2 of the OST]

I don’t know if I die at the end of Disc 1, but I think … even if I die, I’ll probably get to live again. But I don’t know who we’ll lose. I don’t know what else. I’ve been … meaning to visit Caion on Samudra before we go to Valaïs, but I also really want to see Badri if it might be the last time …

At any rate, I don’t blame Her. I don’t think most people on Almachadta would blame Her if they knew Her. I’ll show you the memory, the full thing, when we see each other again. Honestly, the worst thing about it was … knowing She didn’t want to, and would anyway. The denial of control. How little choice any of us have had in any of it.

That also … you probably need to hear it; I didn’t say it because I thought it went without saying, but I’m learning I should be better about articulating myself. I don’t blame you for what the Beast does. I would tell you I forgive you, but I don’t think not being able to stop a force of the universe is a thing that needs to be forgiven. I’ve never once let my theories about what the Beast does or does not do change how I think about you, and what I feel for you. I’m glad we’re friends.

I’m sorry that when we were becoming friends you were carrying this by yourself.

At any rate, I’m doing better than I was. I’m back at the sietch. I talked to Aury. I’m not gnawing on problems uselessly in my head, at least for not. I’m going to introduce Awa to Algol. I’m going to talk to Wolf about some of my weird visions (??). I’m going to speak with Ravhi, I think. I still could use a Jae-hug. I hope you’ve at least gotten a hug from Zaya and I don’t know, whichever harem member who’s job is to hug you.

Light. I need to reach out to Zaya.

the one thing ill say about patterns is that if you can understand the one thats underlying everything were dealing with, maybe you can find us all a way out of this mess were in.

it’s nice that you’re willing to defend jorule. i dont think hes had many people willing to do that in his life. (and youre not wrong about him, but don’t tell him i said that.)

i dont even remember at this point WHAT i said i wasnt gonna talk about until. later. but. hm. that’s. hm

i dont really have the clearest view of it all, when it happens. mostly trying to focus on saving my own ass because rebuilding from baling wire and scraps is a pain in the ass but. like. you know how samudra is just kinda there underneath everything else? and how on samudra if you believe something is real hard enough it becomes real? what do you suppose happens if the pieces of two dying planes and a wailing, awful rampaging godmonster touch down in the middle of that ocean. its. its not good salme

this makes one of us. so. thank you. it means a lot to me to hear you say that. although i never felt like you blamed me for it at all. like any of you did.

zaya actually told me to say hi and that she misses you just now. i think she can tell when im writing something to you or something. shes really hot like that.

I mean if I could see the pattern fully I would … not be as angry and scared as I am all the time. Why does the corpse-sun on Mu radiate flourishing, burning, and pellucid gnosis to the level it causes cancerous growths that look like irrica? A lot of us suspect that whatever the Rite of Renewal is on Mu causes the destructive cycles on our planes but … I don’t quite think that adds up, because things are already going wrong. Almachadta’s been … ripening … for months at this point.

I just wish I knew more. Just knowing, let alone deciding.

I think Jorule has a lot more defenders than you’d think. At least I kinda made a strand giving him shit about it once, and all sorts of people came out of the woodwork for him.

And I mean, I also don’t know what you were and were not going to talk about because you were Very Cagey about stuff. I think you wanted me to draw my own conclusions. I think also you were … perhaps being a little silly? But. I can at least share this with Caion, and it might make all the difference for the people on Samudra now. And maybe it won’t, but. Maybe it will.

If everything crashes into the sea, how does it all start over?

Also what happens to you? You’ve died in these before—or at least your body has, right? I. You don’t have to answer that, but. I’m so sorry.

Yeah maybe try to forgive yourself? Maybe that’s for once this is over, but. Forgive yourself.

Oh! I keep meaning to message her, and then I get distracted or self-conscious or whatever. Tell her I say hi back!

you cant see the pattern fully right now, sure. but if im right, you (well. you six but im biased) will be in the best position anyone’s ever been in to see it in the history of this entire damn world. its just a matter of getting there. you already know… more than i do lol if were being honest.

and yeah the weird plants on almachadta and the moons doing their moon shit have been happening for a while already nothing that hasnt happened yet on mu could… possibly cause that unless some really hinky weird time shit is happening which i wouldnt exactly rule out but i havent seen any evidence for yet

xsaieta doesnt count hes just sad he never got to ride jorules dick tbh. i guess he wasnt the only one though

still do, you can figure shit out i miss if you see it with fresh eyes its already happened like five times babe

boy motherfucking howdy i wish i had a good answer to this one

it just

does???? it just does. speaking of things im hoping you have a clue about that i dont

I think the six of us will know eventually, but … I’m not good at patience, and it’s frustrating. I need to start sparring when I get frustrated and upset rather than lashing out.

Though I think you still probably know a lot about the Beast. I know a lot of things, can make sense of a few of them, and probably have forgotten some details that matter very much. It’s, again, frustrating.

I mean really hinky time shit is happening on Mu but it’s more the flavor of a “fucked-up stasis field” and less anything that would account for the countdown starting on Almachadta and the Beast. I still have no idea what the fuck is going on with the moons though—at least the “too much flourishing gnosis creates weird plant monsters” makes some kind of sense for Almachadta.

I. Don’t know that I needed to know that about Xsaieta or to think about Jorule’s dick? So thanks for that.

Huh. Has it? I mean I’m glad. That’s. Good to know.

Does. Hm. So there’s no period of regrowth? Do you just. Blink or wake up and suddenly everything is as it was?

think of all the sparring we could be getting up to if you werent up to your tits in sand planet. its bullshit, i tell you. (im joking (but only sorta))

no problem babe, im a helper

kinda.

thats genuinely the best ive got. thats why i want your take on things, if i can get it, and if i cant get it then… well. not ‘none of this will fuckin matter anyways’ because it will. but like. itll be a moot question

Even as short as I am the sand doesn’t make it up to my tits, thank the Light. I was wearing my clothes from the Beast when we arrived here and I got sand in so many places. It was horrible. It was a whole fucking situation.

Anyway, I have something with a higher waist and with less ability for sand got get places because it truly was wretched.

Oh. That reminds me. You probably can’t teach me over linkpearl, but is there a trick to your little spin-and-outfit-change?

Okay. If you remember—anything—sounds or smells or … just anything that could be useful. I don’t know if. Even if you get my perspective, I don’t know where it will be coming from so. I’m not sure how useful it will be. But noted.

oh goddess that sounds awful. i bet your clothes are really cool now, though

ill think about it. like the whole fucking thing makes my head hurt but youre staring into the sun, i can too. metaphorically

All the outfits changes everyone has gone through (that I had memories of) have been accessioned in the library. If you ask Zaya very nicely she might show you. It’s the folio Sartorial Peregrinations.

It’d be helpful, yeah. Is it … the kind of weird like when you and Annarr slipped into the … weird fucked-up dimension and you told him the Truth That Burns or is it a different kind of fucked up.

different kinda fucked up

hey i have a stupid question

what do you think i might have that shijin would. want

like if we were in the bazaar and bartering

Jae, I hate them sometimes.

Isn’t it silly of me, who can forgive the monster that I know will kill three planes worth of people I love and has, over and over again, but to hate the unsundered world itself?

I don’t mean that, not with my whole heart, but right now …

The past is supposed to be instructive. It’s supposed to be honored and carried. It’s not …

I don’t want our pain to be just an echo of someone long ago’s pain. I don’t want our joys to just be counted as lesser. I want to connect with the past, understand it, care for it.

I don’t want to be defined by it. I don’t want to do this, just. Thinking of what was and how to get back there. I don’t care about going back.

I want a future.

Which is I guess what everyone wants but. I don’t know. I was thinking about the heart and I just got so angry. I was thinking about patterns. I was … I don’t know.

A pattern isn’t fate and an echo is just an echo. I just. I don’t know.

for what its worth i think. that. pain looks like pain looks like pain. what happens to your world, and my world, isnt some kind of. fake knockoff of the real bad thing that really happened just because theres more than one thing caught in weird trauma loops here? i think pain just looks like pain wherever you go and people, including. both of us? are not super good at escaping that

What are you bartering for? I mean you have any number of stories about duels. Zaya knows all sorts of gossip. You have information about past worlds. I’m sure you have gossip about us.

I guess the first thing in bartering is knowing what the other person wants, yeah? Whatever you decide on, make sure you give the impression it’s something he’d want to know, even if you’re not sure it is.

salacious gossip about wolf mostly because i cant keep my nose in my own business it really doesnt matter thats why i said it was a stupid question

good shout, though

anyways

i guess im confused about who said anyones goal was to go back to a world that died

you cant step in the same river twice. you cant go home again. even if we wanted to, and sure im curious about what life was like for them, if there was stuff about their world that slapped ass we should steal it, absolutely

but like

idk where im going with this but im confused at where its coming from

and i want to understand

nobody gets to define what matters to you, but you, though, ever, thats what i wanted to say before and didnt

I mean, salacious gossip about Wolf is important in its own way.

As for what you said, I mean, we’ve talked about reuniting the worlds and obviously I think even if everything was one again I … it wouldn’t be going back, right? It’s also not a goal in itself, just a possibility. I just. I don’t know.

Mostly I was frustrated at the heart itself, caught in its moment and catching the rest of us in it too when everyone is walking around with wounds.

But, I guess, that’s the difference between being alive and being dead. And maybe also the difference between being human or human-adjacent and being … whatever this was.

And I do know what matters to me, though the answer is sort of “nothing and therefore everything.” But I know choice matters. Understanding. The dead, but not at the expense of the living. And I am getting to a place where I can fight for those things, I think. I hope.

yeah, i mean, it’s like…

i mean its NOT like but its a LITTLE like the mother of monsters, right

or… me, i guess. sometimes i feel like i cant be anybody other than who i am

but im not actually sure thats true. i think, before i was here, i probably… i could have been a scorpion but i dont think i could have been a scorpion queen and somehow ive managed to. not do an absolute shit job of being the scorpion queen

i think youre right, i think thats what being alive means

I mean you’re … Jae. And you’re also Stings & Kills. And you’re also whoever you’ve ever been before and will be after. But.

Who you are right now isn’t who you were. You said it yourself. You’ve learned patience. You’ve learned, I think, to rely on others. You’ve experienced helplessness, but hopefully haven’t learned it.

I’m betting the Scorpion Queen I know isn’t much like who you were when you first landed here.

I was sort of struggling with this because I’m not who I was a … what, two months ago? And I’m not quite sure what I’m going to be after the end of Disc 1, let alone on the other side. “What am I? What am I becoming?” That’s a question the Mother of Monsters asks. It’s a question I’ve asked of myself.

I think some of us are better at knowing exactly who we are than others. Aurelius feels solid, like he knows he was once different and knows he will be different but is satisfied with who he is right now. Wolf feels like he knows each side of himself and can inhabit all of them without contradiction. I—

I’m a mosaic of things that I can’t make fit, held together by a story that I tell myself that’s called “Salme.” I’ve tried to make them fit, but they don’t. What I can do is let them be what they are—contradictions and parts that are somehow me and not me, you know? I’m good, I think, at holding contradictions. I’ve been so many things, and I’ll be more.

And … yeah. That’s the privilege, I think, of being alive. Of knowing we’ll change and picking how we want to carry forward the parts of ourselves?

Or, I mean, that’s how I’d look at it.

yeah! yeah. people arent puzzle pieces that fit nicely together

like, even people who really, really seem to have their shit together

goddess’ perfect little orbs of people who seem to look the same from every angle

all do our time in the messy bitch mines, right?

the story of the scorpion queen is a story i tell to other people. its not NOT me but its not all of me. and its a story i wouldnt have told about myself, before.

i think… things that are alive grow because of the stories they tell themselves and each other, which is a different way of saying. the exact same thing you said really

cause

youre right!

I’m fairly good at understanding people and … how people understand themselves. It’s a critical part of who I am, I think. Which is to say I’ll actually take that compliment.

I think some people understand themselves differently and do deal with their contradictions differently than I might, or you might. We all have them, I think, but finding a way to integrate or accept those contradictions is something everyone has to deal with.

I’m. I change very easily, in response to who I’m with. Aurelius has always asked me to only be myself, and for a while I struggled because I didn’t really know who that was. My answer has turned out to be “whatever I’m thinking or feeling in that moment.” It’s different than when I make a more intentional choice in filtering or presenting parts or versions of myself. It’s maybe more true in some ways, but the other parts of myself are also me.

Anyway, I think we’re all probably more than any one person can ever fully know, but I think the telling of stories—and the building stories together, too—I think that’s also a critical part of being alive too.

So I talked to the stoicheia in the pillar again—Algol. And they said something that reminded me so much of you that I thought of you, and they said you were hot. I thought you’d like to know that.

I talked to Ravhi (the head of things here and Wolf’s—something) and it went way worse somehow. So that’s a thing. I mean. I didn’t cause an incident but. Fuck.

ahahahahah i guess it has good taste? you TALKED to it though? thats fucking cool. or like, is that normal? do people there talk to it or was this another ‘Salme manages to talk to the weird eldritch thing because she is amazing’ special

anyways dont worry about ravhi i’m sure he’ll be fine. words are hard if hes had to deal with people at all he’ll be chill about it and if he isnt then he sux

I don’t think it was a particular function of me. I don’t think anyone can talk them? I think it was a function of being a Pure Heart; Awa was able to communicate as well. I think the only thing I did was look back when they looked at me the first time?

Anyway, Ravhi thought I was going to start a Rite on him! Which. I understand, in retrospect. I think I know what I’d like to do to … hm. Not apologize, but to. Reorient things, after that.

if it looked at you and only you looked back at it then that means it was a particular function of you, babe (the function is being cool and good and always wanting to make friends with the weird fucked up creature. which i for one appreciate)

wait he thought you were going to start a rite on him and that was a bad thing? these guys are weird thats how you make friends

anyways im sure you can patch things up!! sometimes you get off on the wrong foot but thats why you have two feet

You are a weird fucking creature, you’re right. I guess, at long last, I have to accept the compliment. You win.

Jae, he’s. Like a very melancholy puppy. I’m not sure how often he’s ever engaged in the Rite? I think the Rohsu mostly due that?

And I’m working on it. I’m going to be telling some stories, I think, in a professional capacity. I’m a bit stuck on the story I want to tell about Almachadta, but I’ll figure … something out.

hahaaaaahhh i always win in the end >:)

maybe thats his problem, maybe he needs to do the rite more. loosen something up in there

that sounds like a really lovely idea tho, they’re lucky to get a sword saint performance! if anyone can share the story of your world with the other worlds it’s definitely you. the words will be there waiting for you when you find em i believe in you.

oh my goddess, lol

Hm?

so i sent tsihan and rohirek through the gate in the deepforge (they volunteered to do suicidal mad science together as long as, quote, neither of them would get to have been the one to go through first, end quote)

Are these the weirdos you cast Libra on? Are you just doing science experiments on them?

Are they okay?

salme they made it back out and they are currently making out in front of the goddess and all of clans twitherym and too many boots. it’s pandemonium. theres going to be a brawl

this is the most fun i’ve had since you guys left

what do you fuckers KEEP in there

Gold and silver magic train with rainbow wings.

Man I sure hope they didn’t fuck on the train. If anyone’s going to irritate Aury by fucking on the train I want it to be me. Ideally with him so—yeah okay I’m going to stop there.

Anyway did they see anything? There’s a ziggurat farther in, and … I’m sure there’s plenty of other things too. I mean I guess they’re busy making out and causing clan conflict but. Once they’re done with that you should ask. (It’s just like that play Zaya got me tickets for …)

Also how did they get out of the Cathedral? Does that mean we could, theoretically, also get out? I think we might be able to move that gate if so but I’m not sure.

Do. You think Jorule’s plan might work?

lmaooooo made you think about fucking aury on the train, have fun next time you end up going back into the void, you’re welcome

anyways no they didnt even go on the train they just saw the platform. pretty sure they DID fuck on the platform tho

all they would tell me when i asked how the fuck they got out was “very carefully”. i’m pretty sure i know how i could get out, it’s definitely possible it’d just be a huge pain in the ass no matter what. way better to move the gate or open a second one or whatever when you can

anyways…

i dont know! i genuinely dont have any idea. i… am going to go there though, and i’m going to bring zaya, and anyone else i can. theres no fucking way i can evacuate… like… everyone. but im going to start working on what i can. and we’ll see what happens. it’s worth a shot. it’s… it’s worth a fucking shot.

if it works, i’m not even gonna be mad about owing jorule one. its YOUR plan, though, isn’t it? not his. tell the truth and shame the devil

You think I haven’t thought doing ridiculous with my partners in various ridiculous places before? You think I can’t deal with these thoughts? Come on.

I’m going to be back in the void soon. If you have a way I could get out, or if … idk. Maybe Aury could help me? Or Awa has his tenebrous orb techne … I don’t know. It might be easier to move more people.

And no. It’s all Jorule’s work. I tried to make plans but they were nowhere near as good. Jorule all the way down.

i mean yeah obviously but i bet you blush the next time you go back there now. it’ll be cute

I have a question.

I think Aurelius is going to move the gate on the Beast, which should make getting people out easier.

Were you going to stay in the void when it happens, or were you going to go back to the Beast?

I’ve been. Trying to think. If I should be on Almachadta. I think I have a couple tricks that could let me survive it. It feels like I should be there, but I don’t know, and I don’t know who else to ask.

gonna be in the void for it if i can, want to be there to see whatever the fuck happens either way. never done that before. and. zayas gonna be there so.

i figure… well honestly i assumed all of you would be in the same place but i guess that was a silly assumption? i dunno. cant tell you what you should care about although i guess i’m curious why you say it feels like you should be there? is that what you want? if it’s what you want, it’s what you should try to do. and if you’re not sure what you want… idk, try to figure that out next and then answer from there? seems kind of obvious and unhelpful as a response but its what ive got.

I mean I think we’ll probably be in Valaïs but I could try to. Maybe. Step through to Almachadta?

I don’t know what I want. In some ways I want to be there because I have always thought I would be there. In some ways I don’t, because what good would it do? I also again don’t even know what’s possible.

If you don’t feel that obligation toward the Beast then I think I … probably don’t need to feel that obligated toward Almachadta. I’ll think about it.

i’ve been here enough times when it happens that i know it’ll be fine without me. i guess… maybe make sure the mask ends up where it needs to be, just in case…? not sure how you’d do that without not having it the whole time youre on valais tho. idk.

i dont think you should feel like you HAVE to be there. not unless you want to be.

Yeah that’s … another concern. About the Mask and where it should be. I. Honestly don’t know.

yeah i mean… i dont think id want to be apart from it myself for very long in your shoes. theres really no precedent for a lot of this. which is, in its own way, really fuckin exciting, i think.

nice to be doing something new, for a change.

I think. It is nice, but also I don’t know what to think about it, not really. Exciting, sure, but also a lot that can go wrong, and I’m not sure who to ask. I should message Badri.

yeah, ‘exciting’ does not mean we know jack and/or shit. if there’s any way you think i might be able to help, let me know, alright?

I sent Badri a message. I hope he’s all right. I haven’t heard from him for some time.

I. Will probably not know until the moment arrives. I will perhaps set things up so I can test it.

I do feel hopeful. I also feel. Strange. I hope Valaïs offers a distraction.

Ah. I guess, for you, do hummingbirds, large shaggy black wolf-dogs, or jaguars hold any significance for you? The void has gotten somewhat crowded.

large shaggy black wolf-dogs are a whole-ass repeated motif but they’re also just, like. a thing that happens. if you have dogs you probably have big friend shaped shaggy black wolf-dogs that want to lick your face. but like wait are there dogs??? in the void??? is that legal? i guess theres no rule that says you cant have dogs in the void. how did it get there? did someone leave one of the gates open or.

Okay. There have been several metaphysical animals that have appeared—the dog, the jaguar, the hummingbird.

Wolf and I had both seem the dog briefly, in visions where it greeted us in front of amphilyke structures (amphilyke being the crystal that is yielded from the mix of radiant + tenebrous + liminal gnosis). Then the dog was actually present in the void.

The hummingbird seems to be an … enemy of the dog? When we arrived, the presence of the hummingbird seemed to interfere with Ember’s (the … little guy who lives in the void) ability to sing. (Uh. Usually when we get to the void, Ember has a new song for us). Once the dog, er, removed the hummingbird, Ember was no longer silent and was able to sing.

The jaguar is … a jaguar, but all black. It seems to know the dog? It is … somehow connected the the liminal? It came from a direction that is not knowable direction, and … she was focused on me, at first, though she was friendly with everyone. I’m going to see if I can understand her better. She did have a song:

[Attached are the lyrics to “Every Void Has A Jaguar”]

Anyway, I have no idea what any of it means, but. This was largely new? Wolf had seen the hummingbird and the jaguar before in the void after the Beast, but the rest of us hadn’t.

what the fuck is up with these lyrics

also what the fuck kind of a name for a song is that

I don’t know! I don’t name the songs or write the lyrics. Though … I feel like the lyrics do make sense? In a kind of. Hm. Slantwise way?

would love to hear you unpack that one although if anyone could make sense of something like that itd definitely be you

Question: Do you, or does the Beast, consider itself inherently burning in nature?

As for the song: It’s about impossibility and liminality; movement that cannot be easily defined or understood but is nonetheless movement, yeah? And through the process of impossible movement (a kind of translation) the transformation of the self, signified by, I think, the skin/pelt (another kind of translation and another kind of boundary).

I’m not quite sure what to make of the “beloved” repetition—whether the “beloved” is the self that is also not the self, or whether it’s another that is contradictory to but nevertheless integral to the self. Regardless, the overall cant of the song seems to suggest the “self” is less critical than what is done, i.e. “The going grander than the goer” (though I think it shouldn’t be read as the abnegation of the self in any sense; there’s clearly celebration, even as there’s transformation).

I’m not quite sure what to make of “The under-world acquires a mouth” or “I attend to its additional teeth,” though again I think it’s reasonable to at the very least read it as a celebration/acknowledgement of change/translation.

The movement and manipulation of space is also a key theme throughout. I don’t … actually know what the heavy use of mathematical terms mean at the opening, but I know many of the words have mathematical meanings and mathematics can be used to calculate time and space. The part that’s a bit less opaque to me comes at the end: “Incline, and there becomes a thither.” Incline is a change in elevation as a verb, right? And “there” is a word that marks a single point in space; “thither” is kin to “there” but implies direction and movement, an end point to which one is headed.

Er, at least, that’s my read on it. Could be completely wrong, but. It made some sense to me, even if the specifics being communicated were a bit opaque.

void jaguar cares about good dental hygiene at least, that shits important

also youre really fucking cool, did anyone ever tell you that?

and hm. actually that. THAT line makes sense to me i think!!! what if it means ‘incline’ as in ‘incline your head in a direction’?

she’s carrying something, or someone. or carried them. and it wasnt an easy crossing i dont think. and then at the end. ‘tell me where to go, and i will carry you there’. thats what i would be saying if i were a void jaguar singing a weird fucked up song anyways. im probably full of shit but you have me hopped up on song understanding juice. this is what happens salme!!!! this is what happens when youre cool.

anyways as to your question i always saw the Beast as a burning world yeah. idk about anyone else, i probably fuck things up by talking about it and so i dont. actually know if anyone would see it that way if i werent there running my big mouth haha. but. i do see it that way at any rate!! whats up?

I mean, you tell me I’m cool fairly often. Not sure if I believe it, but I’m trying.

Oh, that makes a lot of sense. I wonder if this was her beloved, though maybe it was someone else. They were both changed in the process, yes. That makes sense.

I wonder if the Under-World is the Void itself? If the mouth and the teeth are the new things being added to the Void? Which is. Perhaps. Not the most reassuring image all things told, but. Hm.

Regarding the worlds … haha I’ve explained this so many times, but. Basically, when we arrive in the Void after opening a gate from the plane we were last on, it’s usually suffused with gnosis that matches the gnosis of that plane, i.e. flourishing from Almachadta. After Mu, though, the Void was transformed by tenebrous, not radiant gnosis. I asked Yazhn Ravhi about it, and he asked me why I had assumed each plane necessarily corresponded to each type of gnosis. I had thought that was a given, but now I’m questioning my assumptions. Figured it was worth asking you for your take.

its ok ill just keep saying it until you figure out that im right :)

maybe mu bullshat you???

I think instead it’s something to do with tenebrous and radiant gnosis. Caion called them each other’s context and I think he’s right? Figuring out the actual mechanism is something else entirely.

Question: You said you have some tricks for helping things survive the end of the world. I want to stick a fiend in the Sword-Saint’s shrine to record what it can. Jorule … Jorule convinced me sticking myself in there was foolish, but I think a fiend is a safe and reasonable bet. Any suggestions on what I might consider making it out of?

ohhhh shit, that might just work, yeah.

so… okay. my throne is what makes it through, for sure, each time. i’m usually attached to it when that happens and make it through in one piece. it’s an AF, just like the Kinder, Gentler Paths are, but i think… the same principles COULD work for a fiend, i don’t know. i did some experiments early on that make me think this could work.

for the raw material, youre gonna want metal that was important to someone, once. that’s. that’s why my throne is made out of other peoples’ weapons, or at least, that’s how it started. but if you make some kind of hard shell - think of the toughest sonofabitch you can - out of metal that has a history, that saw use, that protected something - and you give the fiend the capacity to turtle up in on itself when shit goes down? it might just work.

Oh. That’s immensely helpful. That’s also. Hm. Metal that was important to someone once might be a challenge but. I’ll see what I can do.

Thank you.

omg caion is adorable