But then the Knight of Oryx, First Navigator of Phase Spaces, Primogenitor of Possibilities, gained the poise and the momentum. Through inexorable campaigns and the absolute mastery of operontological warfare, which is the method of war which converts mere strategy into an attack on the enemy’s very fundamental modes of being and knowing, Xivu Arath had claimed great swathes of Oryx’s territories. At first, the Knight of Xivu Arath, She Whose Victory Is Idempotent, had the upper claw. Thus announced, they drew their blades and struggled. “No,” said the second Knight, “Xivu Arath is victorious in all wars north is toward my Queen.” “North is toward Oryx my King,” said the first Knight. All directions were north, but it was not at once obvious what lay at the northernmost place. To another north was one end of the bridge, and to the last north, the other end. To their other north was an atoll of scriptures adrift on a sea of interpretations, gnawed at by heresies like white eels. To their north lay a strata of ossified corpses, tangled bones left by newborn beings who had hatched into this overworld from the weeping blistered souls of living worlds at the end of their sanity, only to become unanchored from the universe of matter and confuse their shapes with each other, until they became one screaming interchange of bodies and died.

One day, as the green eye stars set behind the far-away spines left by the machines’ failed injections, a Knight of Oryx met a Knight of Xivu Arath as they passed across a bridge in the Sea of Screams.

In dust they are spoken, in dust of our skin.

Let us remember the great feats of our King.

Dust be my destiny