Scene 3.1 – Prologue 1
Hark! sang the herald angel.
The prophecy is fulfilled – my mistress incarnates!
Glory to her: Divine Midwife of Ohida!
And her name shall be called Beautiful Mother, Precious Theometrix, Holy Divinity of the Fourth World!
Begone, sang the gods in chorus. The prophecies are plenifoldly complete, and the Fates have retired. Our incarnations are multitude, legion, beyond counting. Can you not see that we have become bored with our stars, that we tire with the false worlds? Leave us to our councils of war.
I sing not of the prophecies of creatures, but of the Mehr!
But the gods were no longer listening. As an angel, the herald was only an extension of her mistress; self-complete, yes, but an ancillary homousion and little more than a symbol of the maturity of her goddess’ mentality. She did not have the authority to demand further attention. But her announcement was complete – it was a brightly golden thread woven into the eternal canticle. It was on record.
The speed and unflagging tenacity of Man’s expansion was matched only by its thoroughness. It had begun slowly, spottily – like a mold seeping out from the edge of a northern wall – but that was before the wars, before the arrogant gamble of the Supremals.
Through treachery and cunning, the Supremals had managed to reach into Ohida’s space and pierce her heart: to kill the Blood Queen, the Corparch Supreme, the self-styled goddesshead of Man whose lust for power had opened the stars to Man, and Man to the stars. But the destabilization following the assassination did not allow the supremal concord to simply absorb mankind as they had hoped, to mold them into another slave race. Man – the Hairless Beast – was freed, and like the sands of a shattered hourglass, as foretold by the fates, they spilled into the cosmos.
Man – Free Man, unbound to both Ohida or otherplanetary masters – could be found on every inhabitable sphere, and on many which otherwise weren’t. Wherever Free Man went – no matter how quick or ambitious his pioneering – Ohidan Man’s appetite for consumption and penchant for destruction followed on his heels.
