The Mercy of Gods (The Captive's War #1)
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Read between August 6 - August 9, 2024
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The genius of the Carryx is that we brought the peculiar and often idiosyncratic brilliance of a thousand different species into a central system of control. We conquered asymmetric space by harnessing the birth shrieks of the Temperantiae of Au. We built machines of loyalty by harvesting the poem-patterns of Janantie moss gardens. We built world-palaces designed by the Phylarchs of Astrdeim, communication networks woven from the bodies of the Void Dragons that eat the foam at the edge of black holes, battleships strengthened by the living shells that choked the oceans of Sinyas and Vau.
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Humans are structureless. They live in conflict with themselves and each other. Their great genius is rationalization: lying into mirrors until they bully and seduce themselves into things they would never otherwise do. They are creatures of self-delusion, regret, and desire. That is their way, and for a time we harnessed it as we did everything. For a time.
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The right thing to do is leave. The right thing to want is to leave. If it can find its way to a colony world, a captured planet with less vicious security than the world-palace, it will transmit all it’s learned. It will whisper the secrets that might give its side an edge into vast radio ears that are waiting for it. That is the reason for its presence. That is what all the people it has been died for. What all the dead that they loved took to the Carryx’s altar with them.