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The feeling that TalOS had was Comprehension. Upon the fifth Century TalOS’s hands fell silent as his soul itself was making the signs, hexes, and glyphs. The moment his hands fell silent they became atrophied by the vacuum of space he had lived within for a third of his life.
At this moment TalOS had become completely mummified. Every cell within his body, even his brain, had become dead by the vacuum of space. But it was the <span class="mu-i">machine</span> which anchored TalOS to reality now. He could feel all the Empathatic Anchors he had made in his lifetime. Those Machine Spirits he had served with, Particep Semper who forever growled with rage, and even Calibre who slept calmly within his network.
Enlightenment. TalOS had began reaching the enlightenment that all Priests of the Machine God seek. And with it TalOS’s perspective was no longer tied to the flesh.
His body in its atrophied state had been weighing upon him. As a Genetor TalOS knew the body was the source of most thoughts, and for it he had suffered. Now, as Machine, TalOS was free from those constraints and with his soul he pushed forward.
By the sixth decade he had found an old love. A love of Ritual that was lost so many years ago. As a soul tied down by machines TalOS now completed the complex actions with his ‘thoughts’. Or whatever counted as thoughts when one was just a soul. Maybe these thoughts TalOS had now were created by the machines that ultimately engineered his soul to act?
TalOS did not know. He knew for a fact that he was not ‘one’ with the machines for that could not truly happen. That in truth, even his body was simply a point of anchorage for his soul to deliver its will.
In these last few Decades if Orikan noticed the changes he did not show it. Maybe Orikan had become transfixed upon his work and was no longer caring if TalOS was still with him or not. Or, to counter this, maybe it was because nothing had yet changed that the Chronomancer was not worried. After all, their time distortion has yet to shatter their bodies.
The seventh, eighth, and ninth, were all filled with this refound joy. TalOS simply enjoyed having the flows of time and reality slip by his soul. He only cared now about the knowledge he was gaining and the ritual used to gain it. Such a state was what the Machine God demanded of mankind, and TalOS understood in some matter that he should have been aiming for this the entire time.
When the great war to come is over, he might just do that.
Finally, the Tenth Decade arrived.
