Numbers

The presence of Deaf Witness.

Numbers are the leftovers of old religions. They are beliefs and concepts. They are the stuff of the things destroyed by the Sword. They hang onto the Aurbis as the last nostalgia of their godhood.

They cannot be used again to create new religions. Once they are defunct, they must be ignored or used in some other way. The effigies of numbers are their current applications.

Religions, beliefs, concepts, these things are questions waiting to be solved. When they are solved, and their secrets are revealed, they become static, unchanging, because they cannot use the flexibility those secrets allowed them. Instead, they can be destroyed, absorbed, assimilated into new, still-fresh ideas.

Solving the equation is central to destroying the concept, the unsolved equation.

An unsolved woman makes a terrible wail, and it is no accident that Vivec pierces the solved Moon Axle with Muatra, just as he would an unsolved woman. The piercing is transformation, the transformation from dynamic to static. It is a necessary transition, and it is much like the piercing of the begotten hole at the center of the Tower, the second serpent, womb-ready for the Right Reaching.

There is no perfect system. All these things are built on the same stuff of legend. The ideal system uses new, fresh numbers, for we should write no contracts on the dead. But even Vivec knows his systems are built on numbers, and can be destroyed. Indeed, he insists that they must be overturned. “If there is to be an end I must be removed. The ruling king must know this, and I will test him. I will murder him time and again until he knows this.”

Vivec creates knowing that his creation will be destroyed, just as he destroyed the creations of others. He says: “Think on the theory that my existence promulgates the five elements and alike the egg-layered universe I am cause for great density.” He acknowledges his numbers, he acknowledges the density he creates and the forces that density attracts. He sees his doom and welcomes it, because destruction and creation are the ways of the universe.

And so he embraces that which would destroy us, as we are all him and he is all of us. He is in love with Evil, and that some are more evil than others is a necessary illusion.