Editing Zerthimon (section)

===The Second Circle===
'''Know''' that flesh cannot mark steel. '''Know''' that steel may mark flesh. In '''knowing''' this, Zerthimon became free.

'''Know''' that the tentacled ones were of flesh. They relied on the flesh and used it as tools for their will. One of the places where flesh served their will were the Fields of Husks on the False Worlds of the '''illithids'''.

The Fields were where the bodies of the People were cast after the '''illithids''' had consumed their brains. When the brain had been devoured, the husks came to be fertilizer to grow the poison-stemmed grasses of the '''illithids'''. Zerthimon worked the Fields with no '''knowing''' of himself or what he had become. He was a tool of flesh, and the flesh was content.

It was upon these fields that Zerthimon came to '''know''' the scripture of steel. During one of the turnings, as Zerthimon tilled the Fields with his hands, he came across a husk whose brain remained within it. It had not been used as food. Yet it was dead.

The thought that one of the husks had died a death without serving as food for the '''illithids''' was a thought Zerthimon had difficulty understanding. From that thought, came a desire to '''know''' what had happened to the husk.

Embedded in the skull of the husk was a steel blade. It had pierced the bone. Zerthimon realized that was what had killed the husk. The steel had marked the flesh, but the flesh had not marked the steel.

Zerthimon took the blade and studied its surface. In it, he saw his reflection. It was in the reflection of the steel that Zerthimon first '''knew''' himself. Its edge was sharp, its will the wearer's. It was the blade that would come to be raised against Gith when Zerthimon made the Pronouncement of Two Skies.

Zerthimon kept the blade for many turnings, and many were the thoughts he had about it. He used it in the fields to aid his work. In using it, he thought about how it was not used.

The '''illithids''' were powerful. Zerthimon had believed that there was nothing that they did not '''know'''. Yet the '''illithids''' never carried tools of steel. They only used flesh as tools. Everything was done through flesh, for the tentacled ones were made of flesh and they '''knew'''' flesh. Yet steel was superior to flesh. When the blade had killed the husk, it was the flesh that had been weaker than the steel.

It was then that Zerthimon came to '''know''' that flesh yielded to steel. In '''knowing''' that, he came to '''know''' that steel was stronger than the '''illithids'''.

Steel became the scripture of the People. '''Know''' that steel is the scripture by which the People came to '''know''' freedom.

'''Parable:''' Ignorance is not a weakness, if one remains aware that one is ignorant and embraces the opportunity to learn.

Or, as the Nameless One puts it: "I learned that not '''knowing''' something can be a tool, just like flesh and steel, if upon encountering it, you attempt to '''know''' its nature and how it came to be."

It takes the Nameless One 12+ [[Wisdom]] to understand this parable.