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===VIII: Leviathan=== | ===VIII: Leviathan=== | ||
This Verse is unusual in that it records five discourses between the Leviathan and two of the sisters, but the third sister not addressing the beast or being addressed. | |||
The Leviathan proclaims that they were on the verge of a titanic war between two philosophies called "the Formless" and "the Form", or, as it later became more commonly known, "the Deep" and "the Sky". Speaking of its great vision the Leviathan tells of what each philosophy does: the Sky builds up while the Deep destroys, illustrated with the analogy of a fire being drowned in water. In conclusion the Fundament is extolled as a refuge and a home for trillions, the jewel and triumph of the Sky. | |||
Aurash responds with a plea. The world is harsh for the proto-Hive, the small krill, full of monsters and stormjoys; it is no home. They lived and died in the dark, lives soon snuffed out. And eventually even the Syzygy would destroy them all. She entreats the Leviathan to let them go so that they may continue upon their quest. | |||
The Leviathan counter-argues that their very struggle is what gives him hope. After asking them what drew them to the deepness of the Fundament, he then tells of how he watched them live and die and live again in their constant survival against the planet's harshness, "balanced between the Deep and the Sky". He warns them again that when life becomes too hard to bear this life turns to the Deep for survival, and urges them to reject it, maintaining that the hard way is better. | |||
Xi Ro protests the fact that he has no right to tell them what they should do — he is old, massive, and will continue to exist long after they have died. If that is how the world works, she vowed, then she would change it. Taox would not get away, nor would anyone like her; Xi Ro would kill them all. | |||
The Leviathan seemingly ignores this impassioned defiance, telling them that what they seek will lead them to death, for the Deep is all about the extermination of life. He contrasts this with the Sky, saying that it works against death, creating toward a place of eventual peace and utopia. He ends with a final warning: they will live as death and destruction if they do not return, for once they start down this road they will never come back. The Sky, he contends, is harder indeed but it becomes easier. | |||
Sathona, meanwhile, takes advantage of the Leviathan's silence to reveal to her sisters their father's familiar, claiming it led them to the needle, that it speaks plainly rather than riddles. She asks them what will they trust: the Leviathan and its empty promises, after all they have fought and suffered for, or "the plain, honest worm"? | |||
She commands they dive deeper, inciting Aurash's curiosity, and Xi Ro's sense of adventure, "oh, sisters of mine..." | |||
===IX: The Bargain=== | ===IX: The Bargain=== | ||