Chapter 17: The Unveiling of Hidden Truths (Dysi)

The secret to the Dysi, a community, hidden caleidoscopic, Dysi, mysterious U, Dysi, bottomless, Dysi, unbreachable, Dysi, dwelt in the mountain caves, together with the most hazardous of the Dysi Mountains. Their towers carved into the very rock face, were more than just fortifications; they were living libraries, pulsating with the memories of those long gone heroes and myth makers, vaults of deep thinking and places of deep reflection— places of wonder. Their society was structured not on the basis of power and wealth, but on the basis of the continuous striving for knowledge, the decumulation of the overall structure of the universe and knowledge of the precarious state of equilibrium that all tended to carry in resonance. They prioritized wisdom, above everything else, and spent their lives on expounding and protecting knowledge.

Nyx also heard that a frontal attack to the Dysi would be a twits's fool's game, a death wish. Their magic was unparalleled in terms of magnitude, the sophistication of their defenses was bewildering in its complexity, and seamlessly woven into the fabric of the stone of their mountain strongholds was a deeply sophisticated level of defense architecture. To confront them head-on would be to invite annihilation. Instead, he opted for a different route, an embedding and persuasive control way that would appeal to their belief in truth and their general disinclination for external authority for the logical reasons they built their segregation and, above all, shunned any who dared to disrupt it.

Nyx, master of shadow magic, with a great deal of care, fabricated a mask a change which went beyond mere physical alteration [i.e. Furthermore, he did not stop at mimicking a Dysi human; he himself inhabits a Dysi body, becoming an informant on all levels infiltrating their society, their past, their highly established culture, its sophisticated rituals, its elaborate system of religious faith and its most infinitesimal system of social structure. He dedicated himself to learning their complex, elegant syntax, to the nuanced sophisticated phrasing and the gestures and to the typical dense, sometimes ambiguous, rituals. He absorbed all their former literature, their style of thought, its artistic production and other forms of expression, so that he could walk without stumbling and flow naturally with their lives. He, in fact, turned into a Dysi elder, an eminent scholar known for his wisdom, his penetrating contributions to their ongoing studies, and his profound knowledge of their own long story.

Slowly and steadily he penetrated their ranks, joining them in their academic discussions, enriching their works by suggesting in carefully crafted pieces of knowledge that would sustain them in thinking they favored, giving them a hidden lead and a hidden bias. He became a trusted advisor, a confidant to those in power, a respected and admired member of their community. He earned their trust, their respect, and their admiration.

Having spied initially an opportunity within their inner circle, having snuck in to infiltrate their society, Nyx set about his insidious work of exposure. He did not confront the Dysi leader, Elder Theronas, for fraud, or anyone belonging to the Mytikas. Instead he painstakingly dropped in some clues, slivers of data, subtle "hearsay" which spread the notion of a much more awful, vast generality. He presented ancient texts, seemingly unearthed from forgotten archives, that spoke of the Mytikas's insidious manipulations, historical records that revealed their pervasive influence throughout the ages, and intercepted messages, cleverly disguised as scholarly correspondences, that confirmed their ongoing involvement in the world's affairs.

He interpreted these results not as attacks, but as scholarly observations which urged the Dysi elders to make their own decisions and to replay the puzzle from scratch. He would have wanted them to find out the truth and to feel the pain of betrayal, the crash of the ideal, and the final collapse of their moral value, which in its own destruction, also destroyed (them/himself). He wanted them to confront the uncomfortable truth themselves.

The Dysi, a community that placed above all other human vices the pursuit of truth, greatly troubled with these disclosures. Their sense of pride in their intellectual integrity, their absolute insistence on their autonomy, was shattered. The reckoning that their cherished one, Elder Theronas, had been cheated, had their good practices gradually subverted by an alien had been a anemic cerebrospinal death to the collective consciousness.

Those who still blindly obeyed Theronas, and who retained their old convictions, and those who, propelled by their fanatical insistence on the truth, demanded responsibility and that the truth be revealed, at any cost. Nyx, in his form of an influential older man, by implication prompted the following discussion, not to be fussy but to advocate, candid and open discussion, and thereby truth in its rawest as opposed to palatable form would prevail.

In the end, the Dysi, a society values truth above all else, turned their back on their own leader. They took away his power, not by force or hatred, peaceably with a calm, determined refusal to allow their village to be corrupted again. They brought him to Nyx, not to be punished, but to allow the whole truth to be unveiled, to allow the insidious effects of the Mytikas to be deliberately brought to light, and to permit the Dysi to begin the difficult task of recovering from the fracture of the trust, and of rebuilding their fractured trust and rediscovering the lost intellectual and spiritual integrity. The mountain, once a symbol of their isolation, became a crucible, forging a new Dysi, a people tempered by truth, ready to face the world with open eyes.