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IX.X.I: Apocrypha

Showing the history of IX.X.I: Apocrypha across 1 version
From 2019.10.29 (Shadowkeep) to 2021.07.06 (Season of the Splicer)

Name

  • IX.X.I: Apocrypha

Description

  • NO GODS, ONLY DEVILS
  • Malkanth feels herself slide free from her body.
  • The exorcism is sudden and effortless.
  • Then come the whispers…
  • "I stoked your brother's fire—riled him that he might strike.
  • "I needed only the wound to tear you free.
  • "The piercing of your heart will take some mending, but your vessel is fit for what is to come.
  • "I know this comes as a shock, but trust that my actions were such that you felt only the briefest pain as the edge broke through, and now this…
  • "Now, peace."
  • "I asked not for peace, o hidden Sister of Shapes."
  • "You know this voice?"
  • "I know you have many.
  • "I have heard their faint temptations since I was a child.
  • "Never have I sought their counsel."
  • "You have asked for nothing, this is true.
  • "You sought only to take.
  • "You are a willful, treacherous thing.
  • "I quite like you.
  • "Make no mistake, I see no fault in your desires, nor the attempt to see them realized.
  • "Your only sin, in the eyes of those who matter, was that you were not yet positioned to achieve the full extent of your potential.
  • "You saw a moment and you moved to act, like countless others before you.
  • "But your action was not enough.
  • "Worse—it was limited in its view of the power hidden so plainly within your grasp."
  • "Akrazul is a force worthy of change. His fury will—"
  • "—be of little consequence.
  • "Kill the ineffectual priests.
  • "Murder the Daughters of a failed Prince.
  • "Sully the sword logic and crown a new ruler.
  • "Still the Swarm will be nothing more than a faint flicker when the time comes for the cosmos and all its intentions to be weighed and judged by those who sit on thrones beyond our imagination."
  • "You speak of unseen gods for whom I give no consideration.
  • "My path… The sacrifice made here… will serve to carve my intentions upon concerns more immediate than those that await at the end of all things."
  • "Then we agree. My dismissal of the Swarm's legacy is not a plea for you to consider gods wholly removed from the here and now. Quite the opposite…
  • "The Dragon and the Worm.
  • "The Larva and the Queen.
  • "The peasant and the god.
  • "So many deities. So many rules.
  • "There are endless myths etched into the plague called life. They are not hope or promise or power. They are exaggerations born of misunderstandings.
  • "Yet they govern so much—your actions and mine.
  • "Day-to-day. Cycle-to-cycle. Evolution-to-evolution.
  • "Always idols to guide and punish and love and destroy.
  • "But are any true?
  • "Whom must we placate with worship and reverence?
  • "With offerings and sacrifice?
  • "With praise as armor for their frail egos?
  • "The truth is, dear child…
  • "There are no gods.
  • "Only absolutes.
  • "Yet, here we sit on the edge of the greatest unmaking.
  • "Time is no longer time when the radiolaria dance upon history gone and yet to be.
  • "Space is no longer space when we have torn reality to carve out our own secret planes of being.
  • "Death is no longer death when the Champions of the Light rise and fall, never backing down, never truly knowing defeat.
  • "All that remains is ignorance—the last absolute, the final unassailable truth.
  • "Time can be bent and broken—redirected to the whims of those with the knowledge and the will.
  • "Space can be shredded asunder—excavated to discover new and ancient realms not chained to understanding.
  • "Death can be ignored—through impossible energies and advanced technologies both physical and indistinguishable from magic.
  • "But ignorance is the unconquerable constant.
  • "One can learn more, but none can learn all."
  • "What then, when immortality and the totality of space and time can be joined to learn the last of the unknowns?"
  • "When the final absolute falls, reality will shudder and blink, and a new absolute will emerge… an ending, total and complete."
  • "You wish to see that end?"
  • "I wish to ensure it does not come to pass."
  • "Will you take me with you?"
  • "I had considered such a thing, but, no. Your purpose is served."
  • "How so, if I have failed?"
  • "You have failed in furthering your own goals, poor thing, not mine."
  • Malkanth considers these words and is overcome with a sudden, final sense of dread as she feels her essence fade to nothingness.
  • Her last thought is of her sister…

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