Hi Muhammed, Thank you so much for the workshop friday. It was Nice to hear others geek out and talk about the Zettelkasten principle and with interactive exercises it was wonderful. I have done my PhD with inspiration in Luhmann’s system for knowledge creation so I am quite familiar with it. Still I have a question for you that I am sad I didn’t get around to discuss with you in person at the summit. Instead I thought I could ask it here and hope you would still see it. Are you doing your Zettelkasten in obsidian - and if so why do you still number them? Best Agnes

She never told us how she felt about being bound to you. Never even called you by name. Just called you her anchor. The thing weighing her down, tying her to this world and stopping her destiny.

Big talk. But Agnes is dead. And I don’t know if you heard, but your little woodland circle’s been broken. So I don’t really see, anything getting in my way, if I wanted to burn the flesh, off your snarky bones.

I’m curious to see what it was she did to derail this big ritual, because I’m sure she didn’t pay poor Jack Barnabas to fall in love with Agnes. (beat) Well, ninety percent sure.

As for you, (shaky inhale) whatever you did, and whatever protection it might have afforded you is severed with Agnes’s death. Arthur has told us not to harm you yet, but this whole thing has really rather weakened his authority, and many of us are now looking towards Diego for leadership. But we shall see, I suppose.

It was Agnes herself that suggested it. If we tried the ritual and failed, she said, it might be hundreds of years before we had the strength to try again. But if she ceased, not in culmination of fire, but in a cold and quiet death, perhaps her spark would return to the Lightless Flame and she could try again.

I was… not one of those assigned to watch our chosen one, so I can’t say much about exactly what happened within the walls of that house, but it seems the fight scarred the place in a way far deeper than simple fire. A scar in reality, that I believe has since been compounded by the interferences of other powers.

The compromise we came to was Hill Top Road. We knew it was a stronghold of the Web, full of other children Agnes’ age. We would supervise from a distance, but were confident she would be in no danger. The Mother of Puppets has always suffered at our hand; all the manipulation and subtle venom in the world means nothing against a pure and unrestrained force of destruction and ruin.

We burned down five acres of woodland to create the site. At the center of the blackened, ash-covered forest we built a pyre so high and strong the flame would be clear for miles, and so cunningly built it would catch in moments. Before it, the great bowl of pure water for Asag’s scalding baptism. And in the center of pyre, a hollow, where Eileen was to lay. We prayed, and sacrificed, and anointed her body with holy oil and a crown of kindling. I protested the last one, felt we could do better than to ape the Christians, but I was shouted down. At last, the hour was at hand, and as the first contractions started, Arthur struck a match. The fire was so immediate, so intense, that I was almost brought to my knees, the light of the pyre so bright for a second before it turned inwards, robbed of its glow and comfort, and turned entirely into blistering and unbearable heat. It covered Eileen in a second, flesh blackening and cracking, lips parting in a scream that was all at once agony and joy and terror and communion, as layer after layer of skin and muscle and bone were one by one destroyed by the force of the flames, until at last nothing remained of her but ash and bone. And on top of that, sleeping peacefully among the fire, a baby. Untouched, unharmed, and to our eyes, alight with a burning divinity.

Regardless, the effect it had on Agnes was unanticipated. As far as we could tell, she had destroyed the place utterly. And yet she remained bound to it, tied to it in some vital way. I knew when Arthur told me she had kept Raymond Fielding’s hand, that he was worried. But none of us could know what you were going to do.