---
id: 2026-01-07T06:41:00
aliases: []
title: 2026-01-07 06:41:??
tags:
  - type/timestamped
dg-publish: true
---
# 2026-01-07 06:41:??

> [!quote] _The Shadow of the Torturer_, Chapter 17: "The Challenge"
> No intellect is needed to see those figures who wait beyond the void of death---
> every child is aware of them, blazing with glories dark or bright,
> wrapped in authority older than the universe.
> They are the stuff of our earliest dreams, as of our dying visions.
> Rightly we feel our lives guided by them,
> and rightly too we feel how little we matter to them,
> the builders of the unimaginable,
> the fighters of wars beyond the totality of existence.
>
> The difficulty lies in learning that we ourselves encompass forces equally great.
> We say, "I will," and "I will not," and imagine ourselves
> (though we obey the orders of some prosaic person every day) our own masters,
> when the truth is that our masters are sleeping.
> One wakes within us and we are ridden like beasts,
> though the rider is but some hitherto unguessed part of ourselves.
