Sermon 1

Everything written here has been before; everything written here shall be again.

Ayem was in the beginning. Before light, before shape. In the undarkness she willed herself into being.

This is false. Ayem is Boethiah. Boethiah is the essence of Ayem. Ayem is the mouth of time, Goddess of destruction. In her is found the conclusion of all things.

Boethiah held the promise of Ayem in her. This is truth. Yet truth cannot be contained in a single vessel. Boethiah looked at herself and lamented,

"How shall I reform my essence? How shall I give it to the world?"

And her words echoed, and became solid sound. They fell to the ground and shattered it. The resonance of the impact travelled many millennia, till it reached a dying world, consuming it. But this is a separate tale.

Molag Bal answered Boethiah's cry.

"Come, sister-brother, I know of such paths."

He took her to the centre, to Mount Assarnibibi. This mountain was chosen for secret reasons. Now it is nothing, ground down by eons. Or perhaps it never was. The mountain is a metaphor. Yes, this is the truth. From the mountain's summit, Boethiah and Molag Bal looked upon mist-shrouded Vvardenfell, for this took place at the dawn, when all was possibility.

"What is our purpose here?" Boethiah said.

And Molag Bal tore a chunk from his arm, spat it at Boethiah's feet. There it burnt a hole in the earth, from which unclean spirits crawled forth, seeking the warmth of love. Boethiah smiled, nodded, for she understood. In latter days, pilgrims would journey to the wound, peer into the abyss. All longed to know their purpose, yet none ever deciphered Molag Bal's meaning, none but Boethiah.

Then again, she may have lied, for she is the shape of deception.

Molag Bal spread his limbs in embrace, revealing the black spirals leading to negation of the self.

"Come," he cried. "Come, I am emperor of anguish and king of ash. Come you battered and broken things, longing to be filled."

And from the mist rose 99 shades of extinct species. Once, these beings lived and breathed upon the face of Vvardenfell. They built towers to reach the heavens, and cities on the bottom of the sea. They died, as did the memory of them. Only Molag Bal remembers, for he loves the spurned and forgotten. Some say another daedra claims this sphere. This is a lie born of envy and necessity.

These flickering reminders of entropy reached for Molag Bal, tracing his flesh with charred fingers. They slavered for him, desperate, hungry. Molag Bal brandished his spear, entwined with sigils of shame. The shades impaled themselves upon his weapon, writhing and howling.

"They are ready, sister-brother."

Boethiah opened her mouth, wide, wider. And in her maw were wheeling stars, planets undreamt of, planes which existed only in the heads of blind poets and heretics. Here was the cosmos, the jewel-stringed nebulae, the radiant clouds. Molag Bal thrust the skewered shades into Boethiah. She devoured them, and this is why we cannot recall their names, for they are no more.

"Brother-sister," Boethiah said. "I do believe I've committed a sacrilege."

Molag Bal smiled. "This is good, for the best ideas are born from violation."

And Boethiah was pregnant with an idea. Her belly swelled, bulging. Molag Bal laid a talon upon her flesh and sliced it open.

From the tear spilt a great mass of things, formless flesh, aborted philosophies, monstrous religions. All these things rushed from Boethiah in a red river, splattering upon reality, drenching it in chaos. Molag Bal prostrated himself, stretched out his tongue. He lapped up life-liquid, a mistake. For all born from destruction is tainted with the memory of extinction. For now Molag Bal savoured the heat, but soon he would burn.

Squirming amidst the fecund floodplain were husks, the tattered remnants of the 99 shades.

"Poor things," Boethiah said. "Stripped of illusion so soon."

Boethiah gathered them up, the 99 shades, and strung them together. She hung them from the world's roof and gouged a hole in her forehead.

From the hole emerged a third eye, the true eye, and Boethiah looked at the husks. And she smiled, for they were not husks at all, but stars, and she stood not at on Mount Assarnibibi but at the centre of all things which is no thing. And Molag Bal did not lap up the juices of vanquished hope, but the dust of annihilated universes, here, at the edge of infinity, where death fears to look.

"Oh stars, you are a map to the soul's chamber." And Boethiah looked down, into the swirling ferment from which possibility preceded.

"Vvardenfell is blind, you shall be its eyes. Lead it upon the spiral. Only the fool takes the straight path."

And Boethiah kissed the stars, and bit words into them, which spoke of nightmarescapes and the realm of the untainted, ignorant of destruction. The apex of hell, for those who live without pain do not live at all.

"I give this to you, my child of 99 mothers, to terrify the world into wakefulness. They will remember me."

And Molag Bal groaned, for he had glut himself on unbreakable laws and the dreams of sadistic children.

"You must relinquish yourself brother-sister," said Boethiah. "You cannot cling to unremembered things."

Molag Bal sighed out a stream of regret, yet he knew Boethiah was right. She could not speak deception in this moment, with her belly split open, she was what she was.

Thus Molag Bal took his spear and swallowed it. Latter saints would seek to emulate this, searching for enlightenment on a blade's tip. A foolish notion, for heaven cannot be reached through violence. Yet they practice it still, upon pillars in blasted wastelands.

Gagging, Molag Bal retched up a kaleidoscopic torrent of half-digested notions. Boethiah plucked 99 stars from the heavens. She arranged them in a form thought beautiful by a brass city inhabited with ash-boned demons. She dropped this star-child into the scintillating stream pouring from Molag Bal. He gave a final heave, the last riddles forced from him, and they bore Ayem away, to the world below.

Or perhaps above, it's all a matter of perspective.

Molag Bal wiped thought-drool from his maw.

"Is it gone?"

Boethiah shook her head. "Alas no. Its stain is allegorical, and thus shall outlast sapience."

He sighed. "A pity, my spear is marked with its passing."

"Indeed, all you sheathe it in shall know the agony of remembered annihilation."

"Perhaps this is good. Mortals should be reminded of such things."

"Perhaps." Boethiah plucked out her third eye, tossed it into the void.

"Let us observe the fate of my child; she shall be born into a world of pain, and have the power to ease it."

Molag Bal smiled. "Sister-brother, I did not know you were capable of such cruelty."

Boethiah kissed her brother-sister's brow. "Love inspires such."

The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.