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vake-hunter · 3 years

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It will take very long time for me to reach new content so... May I ask why Discordance is cool now?

i forgot i never posted anything about this. oops.

SPOILERS FOR RAILROAD AHEAD.

Summary is you follow Fires and find its kidnapped Furnace. Direct quotes follow with bold being my favorite parts

"An exchange," it is saying. "We – the Masters and the Bazaar – owe certain debts to a power in the West. It is possible that these debts will never come due, and they are very old. But if you will accept responsibility for them, in the name of yourself and the Tracklayers' Union, then I will let you go. More than that: I will leave you and the Union to yourselves. As long as you do not bring your workers back to London or encourage my own factories to unionise."

Furnace looks gravely at Fires. "I will need to review the contract carefully," she says.

Furnace and Fires are still speaking. "And you'll keep your word?" she is asking.

"By the law of the Bazaar and by the Cedar of the Crossroads," says Fires. "And by my own personal word, of course."

"We can guess what that is worth," she retorts.

"Every person and power in this room is your witness," Fires purrs. "Let them all hold me to account, if I go back on my sworn word."

In your pocket, the boxed seed grows heavier; under your feet, the floor of the Tower continues to shiver. As if everything in the room were holding its breath for Furnace to sign this document, or refuse it.

Furnace draws the contract towards her and solemnly reads its pages. She might be sitting in the boardroom of the GHR, not imprisoned in a tower at the height of the Neath, for all the sign she gives.

Then, she pauses and looks up at you. Mr Fires is not looking at either of you. She stares into your eyes as though that would let her control your body through sheer force of will.

Then she mouths the words: Take cover. Now.

Furnace Ancona dips her pen in ink and painstakingly draws a sigil on the contract sheet. You can't see it from here – in fact, she is shading it with her hand as she writes. She does not mean you to read it. But that can't be her signature, surely?

When she's done, she blows on the sheet to dry the ink. Then she rather pedantically lowers her visor helmet. Only then, she pushes the contract across the desk towards Mr Fires.

Fires picks up the contract and lifts it to read: the text is not English. The phrase sounds like a shattering manacle, like a breaking chain.

The moment Fires has pronounced it, there is a loud crack, like the branch breaking off a frozen tree. All the fires in the room go out. Your whole body feels cold and heavy. Something is wrong with your thoughts.

A law is enacted:

The king forgets the hostage of war

The hunting dog does not know the scent of its quarry

The assassin cannot recognise the face of her prey

The opposing pieces are moved to separate boards

Hillchanger Tower is silent, and the faint throb of the stone has stilled.

Mr Fires lies face down, huddled in its robe.

Furnace is on her back, equally motionless, and her helmet is rimed in ice. You could not open the visor now even if you wished to.

I helped Fires to learn more about Creditor but if you help Furnace, she is badly injured and you have to help her heal.

"Discordance," hisses Mr Fires. "The cold language, the language of stars that have died and laws that have passed away." And it goes on like that, about dead light and corrupted law and the space between the stars polluted.

The fact that Fires calls it the language of dead stars is so fucking interesting. In skies its worded more like it the Discordance is picked up willingly.

"Some stars abandon the immutable light of their brethren for a more nuanced philosophy. The old language no longer suffices; heretical concepts exist for which it cannot provide signifiers." As the symbol takes shape, water turns to frost with a crackle. "These traitor-stars adopt another language. Or perhaps another dialect? The Discordance." She hisses and withdraws her finger from the completed symbol; the tip is blackened with frostbite.

I always thought of the Halved dead in a way and this confirms that yes, it is dead or dying. As suns do in real life when they die, they start to eat themselves. This also makes more sense given how much pain the Halved is in, and how hard it was for it to talk in the Correspondence during the Truth Ambition. And also that it doesn't have logoi.

#lore #fallen london spoilers #Anonymous

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