Before the Divine Gate.
After returning from the Gate of Myriad Laws, Horace felt that he had been filled.
The Blood Moon waxed full, and spirituality gathered. Everything finally merged into a complete circle.
The formless spirit gained substance. The Great Runes, His shadow, his beast, finally appeared.
A peacock slowly spread its tail feathers behind him.
Its feathers were golden, with an eye set into every shaft-the All-Seeing Eye, also known as the Eye of Horus.
Those eyes quietly opened, watching this world, watching everyone present, watching Horace himself.
It was the embodiment of the Great Runes.
Horace's enemy, and also his other half. They were a duality within one whole, each proof of the other's existence.
Its very existence was a kind of eternal "other," constantly reminding Horace: without this enemy, the boundaries of a god would not exist.
In fact, this was the answer Hermes had given Horace: the pinnacle of alchemy, the result of the "Sacred Marriage," was "gold."
And Horace's share of that gold was "Fatalism," but clearly he did not want this final trial...
To avoid it, he would have to move from static omniscience toward dynamic mingling. As they were now, Horace and his beast constantly drew closer without ever overlapping.
They would never be gold, yet they were already gold.
The great work of Hermeticism continued eternally, never ending.
This was precisely the path of the Thrice-Greatest: I can be, but I never am. The ongoing state is the finest romance.
Horace turned and looked at his beast.
The peacock's tail feathers trembled slightly, and all those All-Seeing Eyes blinked at once.
Uh, a little sanity-draining.
"You are me."
The peacock did not respond, nor did it need to.
Don't you know perfectly well whether I am you?
"My enemy, and the