|Over time, lifeforms born capable of this stopped arising. Why, I do not know. I do not know, and my information may be incorrect, since everything I hold about them arrived already worn down to rumor.|
But the rumor was this. Such beings could look at Those Who Remain and not be afraid.|
...!
|Beings so unfathomably true that they did not have to rely on any external authority whatsoever. Nothing borrowed, nothing gathered, nothing granted. Only themselves, generating themselves, answerable to nothing upstream because there was no upstream.|
Noah listened, and under other circumstances he would have enjoyed every word of it, since wonders of existence and deep history were among the few things he never got tired of.
The enjoyment was somewhat diminished by the sensation of his entire existence being slowly crushed!
