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"The Chrism of Adonalsium"


Ripheus23

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While reading itself one morning, a book written by God tried to come up with a theory about how it would end.

"And the Light proved its victory over the Darkness forever." That would be a good conclusion. Poetic, hopeful... I wonder... I wish...

A grunting, grimy man picked the book up, hauling it from the altar on which it was set and carrying it into a larger chamber.

Ah, no! He's going to start quoting me again! The holy book tried to yelp, but it couldn't grant that wish either.

The disheveled monk began to speak.

"And behold," he thundered---the book recalled always suffering this indignity in front of crowds---"it came to pass that the Lord Elithan did smite the Elohim-shadow that was held inside His glory." This challenge the monk issued to another, one holding another---and different---copy of the sacred text.

Sister! the book thought at its sister. Ho! How many an age...?

Whatever she might have replied with, the second monk interrupted with thunder of his own. "But lo," the man said, holding his scripture above his head like an exceedingly dramatic talisman, "one day, that shadow will return, and the Traitors will die by Its hands..."

The one book wondered what the monks were arguing about. It could read other books' minds betimes, but not those of human beings---or dragons, or the Sho Del. Its sister managed to whisper, Adonalsium; at first, the first book judged this to be exhaled frustration instead of an answer. But its sister continued, The end of Adonalsium. Its death. Have you not heard tell of the work of the Traitors?

I have been building up quite the nice collection of dust, the curious scripture said. I even have the piece of a flea's skeleton somewhere on one of my pages. A flea! I lost the dander of the cat from which the flea's body fell, though...

The sister-text sighed. No matter, that. Our God---our author---is... in danger.

"The prophecy of the Sixteenfold Treason is a false prophecy!" the first monk shouted. "Proof, in fact, that your copy of the Recital is a lie. It was not written by the hand of Our Lord. It..."

As the fanatic proceeded to decry the many heresies of those who believed in the slightly-different version of the Recital, the original copy objected, But you are my sister, oh sister! Do those fools know not that you are a work of magic? That much has been Invested in you?

They do not understand why God wrote so many different stories about Himself, the sister-scripture said. They think one, and only one, to be the type of any. And...

Suddenly, a third monk joined the fray. "I will quote to all of you the true words of God." He raised a dry, sleepy scroll, whom the two books heard as if it were smacking its lips in drowsy awakening, and said: "When the Bearer of the First Gem holds the pommel of the Sword of God, then..."

More and more shouting followed, so that the books and the scroll found themselves jolted fully out of whatever half-sleep they had been falling into or out of already.

 

... to be continued ...?

EDIT: Glossary

The Lord Fire. A Lifeless dragon given two Spikes and the Command, "Become evil." He contained all the darkness of Endowment besides that which was imparted to Nightblood, in the form of a massive Dark Breath by which he was raised. On his quest to fulfill his Command, he first went to the Threnodite system and passed through the perpendicularity of the Evil; others who attempted this either died or suffered a withering sickness after emerging, but the Lord Fire became a Sliver of Ambition and inherited all of this Shard's shadow. Thus empowered, he went to Sel and absorbed the shadow of AonDor, his bones reforming and his body surrounded by a cloud of Seons and Skaze. At this point, he was strong enough to fight Paradise (the tri-Shard taken by Larsta after the deaths of Tanavast and Rayse), who he defeated by forming his Seons and Skaze into Blades that executed Paradise in her Spiritual estate; now sevenfold in might, the Lord Fire went to deal with Autonomy, who had taken up all the remaining independent Shards save those of Preservation and Ruin (divided anew after Harmony's death). Note: the Lord Fire did not actually take up any of the Shards in his wake, but became more akin to a Sliver of all those it fought.

Edited by Ripheus23
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