Lore:Sororicide
Sororicide is a Lore book added in Season of the Witch. Entries are unlocked by identifying the Deck of Whispers' Major Arcana cards at the Lectern of Divination located inside the Athenaeum throughout the Season of the Witch narrative. It is a series of scriptures written from the perspectives of the surviving Hive Gods as they construct the 8th Book of Sorrow.
I—Eris Morn—Prolegomenon
Verse 8:1 — The Sisters
Thoughts calcify into actions, and actions calcify into being. Such is the ontology of Hive magic. Such is the Deck of Whispers that has unfolded beneath my hands.
These cards are curious objects—esoterica manifested by my power and the Guardians' tithes. They have taken on our forms: myself, Savathûn, and Xivu Arath. Our loves and fears, our memories, our desires.
Contemplate me. Contemplate the Hive.
These cards unsettle me. I did not wish to be unveiled so. But perhaps that is the consequence of my transformation: I am seen as I am, beneath my bandage. Beneath my skin.
So, too, are Xivu Arath and Savathûn unveiled. Through these cards, we have found ourselves connected. Dear devoted sisters, and I, inchoate but for the eyes I have stolen.
I have deciphered the meanings of the cards, drawn from the shapes of their referents. The whispers ask for reflection and meditation, speaking of the paths we have taken and who we have come to be. And so my utterings, alongside those of the two surviving sisters, have taken the form of a new Book of Sorrow: a bound collection of verses sung by their gods qnd delivered to their brood as scripture.
Now I deliver to my brood. Now I number among their gods. Aiat.
II—Savathûn—Imago Unfurl
Verse 8:2 — The Witch
We were the last surviving siblings. That's what this as always been for Xivu Arath. She wanted all of us to survive. She would throw everything she could at us, so we could learn to survive.
Didn't quite work, did it?
My brother's greatest acts of navigation were his metamorphoses. That was his tactic: he would change everything about himself so that could survive this universe. Meanwhile, my sister cuts the universe apart—makes it sharp as she—until that's left is her and her love.
I'm a little bit of both. No need to choose. I don't have my brother's fear or my sister's vanity.
Even in his infinite adaptability, Oryx could not withstand the Guardians. So Xivu Arath wants to prove she can by being as rigid and unyielding as she always been—no need to fix what isn't broken. Overwhelming forces, tactics, and intimidation.
We are who we are, and we chose our morphs carefully. I wanted life. Xivu wanted vengeance and dominion. Oryx wanted to venture out, deep in thought, and feed on the delicacies of truth.
Well, he got what he wanted. Now Oryx knows death more intimately than us. No bringing him back.
Poor Xivu's distraught. With all that war and ruin to hide behind, she thinks she doesn't show it. Deep down she believes Oryx must have survived through their logic. She believes he'll be conjured back just like he conjured us.
That was along time ago. We've moved past that. Despite everything to come, I will live on. With and without them.
Should I say that I miss my siblings? That I miss the times when the threats of death and short lifespan were still with us, when we piloted our needle, when we dove and became what we became?
No. Xivu is the sentimental one. We are now who we were. Who we were no longer exists.
I sound like my brother.
III—Xivu Arath—Battlesong
Verse 8:3 — The Adherent
What I Am —
Uttered by Xivu Arath —
God of Many Shapes —
I AM THE GOD OF SILENCE. I slit a hundred million wailing throats. I watch as their blood scatters like precious stones. Their screams turn to sighs; their sighs turn to silence. I stand among the dead and listen to the absence of sound.
I AM THE GOD OF LOGIC. I shiver in delight to speak the truth because speaking truth is good. I speak my brother's words, the words he cut from the worm god Akka's throat.
I AM THE GOD OF LIFE. I pare dead things from truth, and in this, I find life that cannot be extinguished. I hold that life, nurture it by testing it against myself, by removing the weaknesses that bring death. In this, I embrace life and all its strength.
I AM THE GOD OF LOVE. Any life that withstand me will be with me in the final shape. There, we will stand together. That life will know me, and I will know it: pared to our true shape, seeing each other for what we are.
I AM THE GOD OF ALL THAT EXISTS. I have endured while others have not. I am the last surviving sibling. I will stand at the final shape and be the end. I will maintain my existence when nothing else has. I will stand alone.
IV—Eris Morn—Evocate Desire
Verse 8:4 — The Harbinger
My vile transformation is complete. What was foretold, what was feared, is now true: Eris Morn has given in to the Hive's endless hunger. She has taken up the mantle of a Hive queen and leads vast armies of acolytes into war.
Inevitable. Inimitable. Who else but her? What else but this?
(Ikora believes my transformation was not necessary. It was.)
I hear whispers, but when I do not? They have been with me since the Hellmouth. This is what I am. It cannot be refuted or denied. This is the shape I have chosen for myself: my morph, the Harbinger.
(Ikora believes I will martyr myself. But what martyr walked towards oblivion with a knife in hand? I will not serenely.)
In my morph, I am unafraid. In my morph, I wield fear, that earliest of fears: fear of devourment. Since we ourselves were prey, we have felt terror at the gaping maw, at the hunger gazing at us with delight.
I have stared that hunger in the face. I have endured it for too long. Now, I will be the predator. I will devour. I will instill that first fear.
I hunger, but that hunger has always strained against the limitations of my Lightless body. But here, in the Witch Queen's endless hypogeum, that hunger has bloomed. That part of me has erupted from my body as from the earth, like one of those obscene, carnivorous corpse flowers—dark cores swallowing sunlight, plush petals open to death.
Ridiculous. Who would compare hunger to a flower? I do not wait passively for my prey. No—no—it is a worm. A worm I have desperate urge to feed.
It can be nothing else.
V—Eris Morn—Mimesis
Verse 8:5 — Blades
What is the nature of war? Ritual.
What is the nature of ritual? Fascination.
Imitation shapes desire, and Xivu Arath has become its greatest meditator. She compels those she wars against to war against her, and the object over which war is existence itself. She takes up her blade, and we take up ours. Xivu Arath cuts at us, and so do we cut at her. We bleed together, mirrored in our pain and violence.
Savathûn looked at us through a veil so that we would not see her. Xivu Arath looks at us through a dark mirror, and she only sees herself.
This is her design, her ultimate mechanism of desire: she would make us into her image. She would cut the entire universe into her image so that she is the only thing left at the end of all things.
Vain and lonely. That is Xivu Arath, bereft of her siblings.
The sword logic is predicated on such imitation. To return Xivu Arath's violence is to embrace it and its beautiful thesis. We are forced to react, again and again, as she makes her advance. We are forced to desire existence at any cost, just as she does.
Fated? Inevitable? No. An ontological trap.
The Warmind knew this, as he could know her the most intimately out of all of us. His escalation did nothing but mirror her endlessly. His self-sacrifice put an end to that font of violence. It was a frustration in her logic that he did so, as Xivu Arath recognizes no sacrifice that does not end in a scream.
But self-sacrifice could not put an end to her war march. Only doubt can do so. And in Xivu Arath's mournful solipsism, she will be left with nothing but that.
VI—Xivu Arath—κατολοφῦρομαι
Verse 8:6 — Lacuna
My Navigation —
Sung by Xivu Arath —
Faithful Sister to Oryx —
THE SKY GAVE OUR SISTER STRENGTH FROM FALSE SHAPES.
SHE FELL TO WHAT FELLED YOU, LONELY NAVIGATOR.
THIS IS THEIR LIE: THEIR IS STRENGTH.
THIS IS OUR TRUTH: THEIR COMPLACENCY DECAYS EXISTENCE.
THEIR DEAD RISE WHEN THEY DESERVE TO DIE!
THEY WILL NOT MEET OUR TRUTH WITH TRUTH!
THUS, THEY DO NOT DESERVE IT.
THEY ARE NOT REAL.
YOU WERE REAL.
YOU WERE TO LAST FOREVER.
OUR UNDYING CREATION.
I WOULD DIE AGAIN TO GIVE YOU STRENGTH.
I WOULD CUT MY WOUND SO THAT YOU MAY STEP THROUGH.
YOU WILL NOT RISE BY FALSE SHAPES,
BUT WITH OUR UNCONDITIONAL VICTORY:
SHE WHO HAS SCOURED OF THE SKY NOW BRINGS FORTH HER BROOD.
THEY HAVE TAKEN UP YOUR WEAPON, WHICH IS ALL THAT YOU ARE,
AND SHE WILL CONJURE YOU BACK WITH HER UNDERSTANDING.
VII—Xivu Arath—Deathless
Verse 8:7 — Liminal
My Throne —
Carved to endure by Xivu Arath —
God of Love —
MY COURT IS WAR, AND YOU WILL FIND ME THERE.
I am war, and my throne is deathless.
Come. Cut the outer curtain of my fortress, and it will open its new eye in a bloodless laceration. Cut further to see inside its wall: the yellow fat, the purple viscera, the teeming rust-cut capillaries.
These are the colors of war. THESE ARE THE COLORS OF MY COURT.
My gates open to the most life. The swollen fountains run with blood and burst with arterial spray. The paths are paved with small white teeth. They gnash beneath each footfall, their roots raw and alive.
Look! I have raised cathedrals made of flesh. When a breeze caresses them, they blush and contract, fine hairs sensing the change.
They are worshipped with bare touch. MY THRONE SHUDDERS WITH JOY.
The halls of my palace are echoing throats, slick and filled with breath. Its windows are glazed with skin, opalescent and alive, latticed with blue-black veins.
The seats of my throne are fashioned with living bones. Break them and you will see their raw, red marrow. Break them, and the wet pith will writhe, Two are knotted with scars: broken and reformed, broken and reformed.
Lookout from the terrace and see the worlds we will devour to sustain us. It is a mouth, yawning black and wide and hungering. It is open in screams of base need.
MY COURT IS LOVE, AND YOU WILL MEET ME THERE.
VIII—Savathûn—Swords and Lanterns
Verse 8:8 — Ascension
My sorry, sad, inculcated sister. She thinks she's as honest as a knife's edge just because she never speaks a lie aloud. But she's prone to contradiction, at least since our beloved brother fell.
She could never quite understand it—someone as mighty as Oryx brought down by liars, his bloodline destroyed, his corpse left to desiccate in Saturn's orbit. Xivu Arath actually believed that Dreadnought of his was unassailable, but Oryx knew that he had limits: more than once, he took the power of our deaths to defeat something stronger than himself.
She's just bitter she wasn't there to die for him again.
She says she's the god of death, but I've seen her throne. It's a mausoleum for life with all the close, cloying comfort of a birthing room, wet and raw and filled with disgusting effluvia. I imagine it reminds her of our gardens so long ago, and all the things that grew there.
She really shouldn't be so nostalgic.
There was a game we played when we were young: Swords and Lanterns. Sathona held the lantern, while Xi Ro held the sword. Sathona would search for her hidden sister, and Xi Ro would avoid the lantern's light. If Xi Ro touched Sathona with her sword, she would win. If Sathona found Xi Ro with her lantern, she would win.
Sathona devised the rules, but Xi Ro would let her sister find her.
I still give her presents, too, of coarse. I gave her Torobatl! My gift to my last surviving sibling. She gobbled it up so greedily, she didn't even consider how it proved her precious logic false.
What kind of thing is a gift? The Deep doesn't like gifts. Neither does the logic, but we're sisters: I thought I'd be nice, and share.
Xivu was too busy to notice that little contradiction. She never even thanked me.
What did she say, as soon as she set foot on Torobatl? "FOR AS LONG AS YOUR HAVE WORSHIPPED WAR, YOU HAVE WORSHIPPED ME." Aiat, Aiat. That was Torobatl. I know a joke in a dead language: aiēbat.
IX—Xivu Arath—Antigone Drowns
Verse 8:9 — Lament
On Xivu's Mourning —
Sung by Xivu Arath —
Sister to a dead king —
GRIEF. There is no grief. I will not grieve.
FEAR. There is no fear. We do not fear
PITY. There is no pity. There is nothing to pity.
GRAVE. He will have no grave. We do not dig graves.
ROT. He rots beneath the waves.
X—Eris Morn—The Augur Casts Her Bones
Verse 8:10 — The Lie
It is a dire error to see Savathûn's predictions as truths divined from some inner foresight. She did not prophesize. What we are attempting here was just one possibility in an infinite collection of possibilities, a choice we made in an infinite collection of choices. She could not have anticipated them all. She could only cast her bones in the space between certainty and augury, and watch them fall.
(It is odd to speak of her in the past tense. Even in death, she is here with us, pulling at our strings, howling with laughter at our failings as she did years ago. But now our failings will be her sister's triumph, and Savathûn's lasting death.)
No, the Witch Queen never dealt in fate. In this, we share her understanding of the universe: every moment is a result of a meticulous application of desire. This path was carefully constructed, and we were predictable enough to place our footsteps into the imprints she made for us.
It is a truth dressed as a lie, so that we may overlook it.
But it is not fate. Fate is the purview of Xivu Arath's childish logic; the dead were destined for death, and the fall of her sword is inevitable.
We are not as easily fooled as she. That logic is a lie dressed as the truth, so that we may waste our time with it.
No. I am not her because if fate. I am her because of will and machination.
But if neither are my own, is that any more desirable?
No matter. I will take control. I possess that power.
I will cast my bones, as the Witch Queen did, between certainty and augury. I will see Xivu Arath's worm devour her. She will be struck down by her own bargain and fall like lightning. I will see Savathûn undone by my own trickery. She will behold me as I am and know that I am her ruin.
This is the path I lay for them, and they will follow it.
Aiat.
XI—Eris Morn—They Drink Strong Poison
Verse 8:11 — The Truth
The Hive are not a monolith. They have internal contradictions, strife, tensions. These threaten to engulf them. There is a fissure forming that I alone behold with open eyes. It will one day yawn and gape, and something will crawl from it that will shake the Hive's foundations.
Perhaps that thing is me.
They sense this possibility and cling to their imperative truth out of fear. To this end, Xivu Arath lies to herself continuously. With each deception she immures herself in a great fiction she must restore with each forming crack.
This is why they fear and revere their own logic. The first doubt, the oldest doubt, the entaoxuanna. It would destroy them.
To this end, Oryx's grand philosophy encompasses everything it touches. Every paradox, every conflict. Love death, war is love, and what is at peace is sick. Even his defeat was a movement towards the final shape, as he knew that his killer would become him. In his logic, that is all his killer could become. It makes failures into proofs, so that their logic may weather them.
It will all collapse one day. I will make sure of it. I will break their truth by my becoming.
I have stolen much from the Hive. I took their eyes, their fetid magic, and now I have taken from them again. Each time I descend into the Deep, I take what I need, and take what I am owed. Just as the Taken King slew Akka to satiate his worm.
I see now. With all my years of study and strife, all my years of venturing into the dark so that I may put my eyes to good use, I have conjured them.
This is what Xivu Arath sees when she beholds my morph. Her brother, triumphant. Reborn.
In this way, I am truly loved.
XII—Savathûn—Love
Verse 8:12 — The Wish
Eris will comport herself beautifully.
I wish I could behold her morph. I can see it in my mind's eye. Her chitin will engulf her; her eyes will be uncovered. She will laugh! And what a delightful sound that will be, after everything! Genuine, full of my guile and my sister's zest for life.
I may still see her morph. There's still time. I'll be so proud of her.
It will seem like fate, something that couldn't have happened any other way. But Eris is smart enough to recognize my touch. She will realize it was me, and understand that this is what I made her for. She'll see all the intricacies of the path I have laid before her from the moment my nephew raised his sword.
Not too long ago, that understanding would have starved me. Now it's just icing on the cake.
I hope she's not too upset. Ah well. I'm sure she'll get over it.
There were contingencies, of course. It's foolish to put all your eggs in one basket. One must lay snares and set events in motion that may never quite snap into place.
But this? This was easy. Perfectly aligned.
Xivu Arath will make it clear why it had to be this way. She will do exactly what I know she will do because that is all she is ever able to do. Anything else would kill her.
Because in the end, my sister just wants someone to live, fully and completely. And she's given up on me.
So I will give her Eris Morn.