The Arguments Of Ion

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[[include component:preview text=To subsist, flesh must grow and change. Dead is the old letter, written and fixed. Ask not for the voice of the Grand Karcist. Ask for words to change your flesh. Ask: **Why did Ion fail?**
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Finder of the words, know this:
Flesh is stronger than ideas.
To subsist, flesh must grow and change.
Dead is the old letter, written and fixed.
Ask not for the voice of the Grand Karcist.
Ask for words to change your flesh.

= **The argument of Hunger**

> The beginning of the world is Nälkä.
> 
> She was born a slave in the city-republic-empire of fair Devistani, where the first palm date trees tended by human hand grew and the water never soured and the flowers bloomed. And the Eater, who ruled it from the shadows made his hierophants in robes orpiment and cobalt-blue. And they kept slaves, not for the sake of the chain, but for the sake of building more and faster. For even as they profited greatly from his wisdom, the Eater grew hungrier by the day. Thus is the danger of things in this world that are unsated when fed. But the women priests were as wise as they were wicked and thus fed their slaves enough that they would never turn, but not enough that they would run away.
> 
> She was known by a different name in the old time, but this name is dead and forbidden now. We know she is Ion. In that time, Saarn was already there, knowing. But they knew they could not be freed, because they were forced into scales, which are the promise and remembrance of insanity and pain. But they knew how Ion could achieve true power and promised mutual liberation to her.
> 
> "I will rest in the shade and die. You will see me again, in the age of flesh and plenty." They commanded. And they rested and their heart broke and they rose no more.
> 
> But Ion then knew her hunger which was not just for meat. She then told the other slaves. "Go, fetch the masters. I will try to save them."
> 
> And when she ate him, she was stricken by the fullness and life, for into herself, she took his untamed parasites and cancers and all that is human and holy. She saw the face of the eater inside the city and knew that her time was short and thus ran and hid, until it was night. For the city no longer used the walls for defence, but to keep its citizens and slaves inside and they were unguarded except on the gates.

= **The argument of Walls**

> The beginning of this arguement is Kaja.
>
> But when Ion saw the walls that the City-Jailers had build, she was overcome with great despair. For on the walls were written the failures of the past in entrail letters and shorn faces.
> 
> 'How dare I?' She wailed. 'Here i see the folly of rebellion. Realistically, in my weakness, i will jump too low and samsh my body against the wall. But i also could jump too high and smash my body on the ground. Either way, i'll splatter like a ripe-rotting caracass under the wheel of a great wagon. And even if i succeed, i don't see what awaits me beyond these confines. How can i even beginn to prepare?'
> 
> At that, Ion-to-come appeared from the future. He opened his mouth and breathed Gnosis into the wall-faces and wall-letters and they realised they never died. And they greeted the future serving king:
> 
> 'Hail, twin. We are you and you are us, for you tried to escape in previous lives and failed already so that now, you will succeed. You will realise that it is easy to rebell  once you have practice. For this, you are the first of our new issue and will  be the teacher of revolting multidudes. Count our faces and by that, reckon the secret number, the countdown to ultimate liberation.'
> 
> And Ion counted and the meaning of her weeping changed. And the eyeless faces spat, which is the weeping motion of the mouth. They made her lungs into wings  and from her heart, a lodestone, so she would not lose the attracting principle yet  be hardened against the nails of betrayal. Her guts, they fed their blood and the City-Jailors from this day would know her designs only by the symbolism of unbroken feet. But she still was not in command of her fertility.
> 
> In flight, she bade them farewell and then spoke to herself: 'The splendour of the occultation is for the Jailers and their caged sage-birds, mesmerized by the sparkle of blue glass pearls. Many failled. Many more need to fail first before we can build even the ideal of unlimited poetry with our unstricken sinews, for the blood flows from the heart to a tired hand and we are animals before we are men.'
> 
> And her first spell made her a wolf.
> But the Ion-to-come smiled.
> 'LOVE IS OUTSIDE MY WILL ONLY'

= **The argument of Pain**

> The beginning of this arguement is Väša.
> 
> As a wolf, she traveled the steppes and found nothing, until she found a band of travelers and thieves. 
> 
> When they saw the roaming she-wolf, they murmed. They had little food and the snow was nigh. 
> 
> "Let us take this dog and sell them to Devistan." The cleverest argued. "That coin will save many of us in winter." But the wisest bared his tongue in scorn and rebuked the crafty fool.
> 
> "It will not, because we need to feed that stranger first. Let us treat it as an equal, let them show what they can do and then let us decide."
> 
> Ion, who had all the senses of the wolf, heard and smelled that their storages were not thin but very full and ripe and saw into the hearts where she saw their real hunger and knew it too had to be sated.
> 
> Ion wanted to then turn tail and run, for she was a reasonable animal. But Ion-to-be commanded her. "Our Liberation will be incomplete if we do not submit here."
> 
> She thus quieted herself and approached, her tail tucked in and her head bowed and bared her throat to the bandits and the bandits skinned her alive and devoured her flesh and were not hungry anymore. But her bones, they wrapped in a bundle and did not harm. When the sun rose again, she was a whole of her body and they took her in. But she would not marry and now wore a long cloak and wooden shoes with high soles. She swore the binding oath of the band and toiled again, even if it was now her choice to do so.
> 
> As her bones were still a wolf's she found them all the carcass of the steppe and they stole no longer from men nor beast. Ion lived with them for many years and each time she died, they skinned and ate her and she was young for the first time of her life. And as the young were meant to do, she looked and wondered at the clouds, the harsh sun and the cold darkness and wondered why it all had to be until the band, who was young only once, looked on in wonder and shook their head and her mind was full of sharp, clean toughts that hurt when they scraped against the back of her skull and the most hurtful, Ion grabbed it like a sword that was nothing but blade.
> 
> "I hate." Was written on it.
> 
> "Why do i hate?" Ion thought with bleeding palms and in the palms, she saw the wound that was inflicted on her since birth and she learned it's name.
> 
> "I had no choice."
> 
> "Perhaps i will like the wound when it is inflicted by my will?" She wondered. She turned to a hunter and asked him to impale her with his spear. But he was not careful, and so she screamed and wailed and the entire camp knew of the endeavor and laughed as they ate her once again.
> 
> On the next morning, she asked the man who speared her.
> 
> "Why does this happen? Why do i not like this?"
> 
> But the man was full of her meat and shook his head.
> 
> "You wonder too much."
> 
> Ion then knew that he had been given both too much and too little by her.
> 
> "I will ask another hunter, Orok. We are friends. Perhaps i will like my killing and wounding when it is more gentle."
> 
> But Orok was shy with his spear and needed a long night of convincing and berries burst to ripeness until he agreed to it.
> 
> Yet still, she still was not happy but died quietly. Though Orok liked killing her and suggested to try the spear from behind. She agreed, after a lond night of convincing and berries burst to ripeness and did not find it to her dislike. She moaned, but this time it was finally in joy.
> 
> When they sat around the fire in the next night, she spoke.
> 
> "This was a relief. I bled a lot."
> 
> "Pain sometimes is an antedecent of pleasure." Orok agreed.
> 
> "But it still felt not good completely. I do not think i can bear this any longer. The wound needs to close and not by a spear. Tell me where to find one who is wise in the way of the gods and the shaping of bodies."
> 
> "There is one on the peak of the mountains but the daevistani have eaten his brain and thus his intelect is fiery rage and his blood burns all it touches."
> 
> "I must go there immediatly." Ion-to-be told herself and left in the middle of the night.

= **The argument of Orok**

> Orok, who taught her the power of growth through praxis, which the slaves of the eater confuse with hardship, spoke these words the last time he saw Ion-that-was.
> 
> There is no beginning to these words.
> 
> Those who are versed in horrid things and violate laws out of good will.
> 
> Beware the pale magot, hairless and grown to be a man, for he is a magistrate of omniprovidence and the best player and contorter of the body and he walks in sunlight and in shadow.
> 
> Beware the cobalt-blue bruises of beaten wives untended and orpiment for the wound within is a dance. 
> 
> Beware the crime of not caring.
> 
> Know the words it whispers in your soul:
> 
> i am younger than the earth
> i am a cr-eat-or
> i am not myself
> i am all of you
> it is all a game
> it is all a parable
> there is none that is your equal
> what i promise is power
> what i bring is reasonable madness
> i put an end to benevolence
> to increase the worlds
> i am the end.
> i am the new beginning
> i am chaos under order
> i am hungry
> **I LOVE YOU**
> 
> Confront him not with your flesh alone and the words that you write must face under your skin. The hope that will be you will be the final prayer of the world.
> 
> There is no redeemption to these words

= **The argument of Flesh**

> The man she came to was it was said.
> 
> But on the way, she had been waylaid in her sleep by the servants of the eater in their orpiment and cobalt blue and they poured tarry whisper into her ear of failed disciples and disciplining and winning strenght like iron that knows not the stone from which it is sprung. When she reached the man, whose caved and open skull dripped with fiery gore, she fell to her knees in obedient worship.
> 
> "I'll do better than the bad examples." she said. "I will never contradict you and i will listened with attention. I will do all my tasks and never ask 'why'."
> 
> Ion-to-come recognized the insanity of these words and knew they were of the eater. Before she could do himself harm, He hit herself on the head with a stick without force and was cured of blind belief. This was the only time and way a superior may hit somebody.
> 
> But the hermit saw a great and wonderous thing had happened and how the wound of hers oozed bad fire that ate her up. He cleansed it with the words: "You are not clay. You are not ears of wheat. You are not iron. You are flesh. You grow and consume. Cut only excess and illness but let grow the strange and benign." And he gave her tamed parasites who took an alien body and they made a house and body that was theirs and also his and his flesh was made slug-like and moist and bountiful by them, receptable of salty tears and he became who he was meant to be and he loved all that was for a moment.
> 
> He is Ion, he was Ion and he will be Ion again. And he saw the eater and he smiled and the eater was his enemy and he won the heart of Lovaatar from the peak of the forlorn mountain, where death would end.
>
> The redemption of this arguement is acceptance.

= **The argument of the Modelbuilders**

> It thus happened that Ion came upon the modell-builders in the straights between the middle sea and the corpse sea which made worlds by clay and colour. But through the will of the eater, the modell builders were lost in the worlds they created and argued at length about marriages, duplications or slandered and praised.  Ever did they propose new ideas without moving their hands and praised their model-worlds, for they thought they could live inside them.
> 
> But he wept at the beauty of their works and he marveled at the ugliness of the art, for it was no accident, but the most thorough intent. He bowed and spoke: Blessed be ye, Craftsmen, most excellent of your time. My eyes wander long and far inside the grotesque duplicity you fashion, but even if i had every age in this world to study them and could feed a thousand eyes, i can not reckon the beginning and end of your works. Tell me of your inspiration and intent so i may teach the purpose of their construction.
> 
> And the craftsmen spoke as two
>
> We inscribe useful lessons onto the flayed corpses and half-eaten babies of our imitation,
> In the depiction of the evil, we banish it.
> ones that are hard to learn if not on the likeness of a corpse.
> The vices of man depicted for the hope of man's change
>
> Then Ion smiled and the parasites and tentacles writhed and lashed within then without as the whole of him grew larger than the sky and he destroyed all the works of the artists with but a move and Daevistan was no more.
> 
> And the artists exulted the teacher and cried, for now they understood why one builds a precise model of a grotesque world.
>
> The redemption of this arguement is true power.

= **The Sermon of the All-Ruler**

> And it came to that time that Ion gazed upon the world from the throne of want and drank the sacred brew of cloves, his breastmilk and Maidens' bloody tears, freely given. He thought of orpiment and cobalt-blue and the setting sun and the rising sun and the peaks of the mountains and all the stars and moons of all the heavens and earths and all was his to command. Saarn, possessor of the the highest lovers and betrayers, asked then:
> "Are you All-Ruler? Did we succeed? Is this what you wanted?"
> 
> Ion stroked the mad, aching scales of his lover as he replied:
> 
> "We, who endeavor to reach and teach our social dreams through fear will be reviled in the age of golden days that might not come. To free the whole from one-chain-one-master, i subjegated the many to my mundane kingship, freed from sacral bind of the Eater. But my order must perish, lest the lessons of its failures go unlearned. The empire which the Eater builds already inside and atop our future bones must be refuted by memory untarnished. For our order is but a prelude to Yaldaboath's greater evil, which is not the one shackled by the sword or the word of the one, but the many unkowing, shackled by the few and Daevistan reborn."
> 
> Saarn understood then and loved Ion more than their will and for this, Lovataar laid rightful claim to be his love, which is more than the lover.
>
>The redemption os this arguement is letting go.

= **The argument of Death**

> Around a circle of Goatherders, at the borders of Adytum, where the rivers of Babylon would one day divide, stories where passed. The one that appeared youngest now had the turn to speak.
> 
> "I will tell you the fate of the Daevistani republic."
> 
> At that, one of the men grew pale with fear. "Shush young fool, speak not deathly names, lest you draw the ire of the undying Emporer."
> 
> "Be unworried, for the governor in these parts has no right graps for the laws and loves gifts of grazing cattle. Let the youth speak, for i have not heard the tale."
> 
> "The republic was a place of healing and learning. Its people were kind, its rulers were wise. Word, not the sword, was the unifying principle. It was one of the first civilisations, where men could rest beneath the shadows of flowering trees and not know fear. Its likeness will not return in more than five thousand years.
> 
> But then, the rebel came, the runaway slave, the She-and-He Wolf with a head that is like iron glass, a sinkhole-prison for reasoning. He set fire and consumed the knowledge and sowed discord and strife, for He hated their faith and was a zealot before the time of zealotry. It will return. But for now, it is gone. He burned it all down, for the sake of the sword and empire.
> 
>And by life, i am the wolf."
> 
>And with that, Ion rose from within and ate the skin of the false goatherd that had mantled him. But the men around him where startled and begged for mercy, but Ion had none and made them ask questions, foremost of which is:
> 
> "Why tell us this? Is this a different standpoint? The tale of the defeated told by the victor?"
> 
> But Ion wrote in the sand and said:
> 
> "No, this is the truth. The whole of it."
> 
> "Why then, Lord? Why commit such an evil?"
> 
> "Because they kept slaves and were slaves of the eater and he saw me and my hatred for my wound and my love of others' spears and he and them refused to change their way. But apathy is the way of kalma."
> 
> And only then, he let them go in peace. But the herder who was timid, Ion punished by reaching into his cranial glands and giving him the Will to defy rule.
>
>The redemption of this arguement is Hormlas.

= **The last argument**

> Before Ion went away to kill the Eater, to slay him now and forever, he gave a single message from every mouth and ear to the people of the Deathless Empire, which would spell the end of their reign in the time to come.
>
> I go now, because the liberation of the individual has been made possible. Walk the pass i followed or take shorter ones. Test your models to the point of destruction, even if they are beautiful. Keep space in your dwelling places to that which is unneeded.
> 
> To reach beyond, distrust of the given is moral necessity. But always hang, draw and quarter those who, for the coin of renown and the poverty of their ideals, sell witty phrases and darkling mysteries like poisoned sweetmilk. They are traitors to the Kingdom of Souls. Ponder if this includes this message. Proceed in the simplest terms the prisoners want to hear and the Jailers let you speak. Remember that the meat needs to be won like the spirit and do not feed their gluttony but sate their hunger for trust.
> 
> Let swell and grow your throat and tongue and trust them to approach the meaning beyond the cage as tools of the cage. Have trust too in the ancestors to hear the words as they are the people of your epoch. Give them gnosis to remember and realize. Do not worship rotting altars but the living flesh. For this has happened once and will happen again until you break our chains.
> 
> Have trust in yourself and above all, love for all. Take no pause in your work and celebration. Take with joy from the orchards, for man has all man needs to live. And when it comes again, Take war to New Daevistan and the children of the Eater. Make hope your armor so terror will become your sword.
> 
> Take love outside your will, for only there you can find it.
> 
> The reedemption of this prophecy is Hunger.

The Arguments Of Ion

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