Years ago, before any of this started, my son foolishly tipped a bottle of ink. It toppled and rolled about on the ledge whereupon I store all my ink, and by some hidden cunning, the force that impelled the flask to fall found in its expensive glass some fault. By the same cunning, this fault was exploited and the neck of the vial gave way, allowing the black flood within freedom and doom in the same instant. For as it burst from the crystal prison, the direction of its flow led it from the glassy trough and into the empty air.

My son fled, of course, as the sable waterfall--or rather, the sable inkfall- -poured from the shelf onto a blank leaf of paper that lay on the desk beneath it. It was at this point that I entered the room, confused by the boy's sudden and terrified exit, and though the shadow liquid was, in its death throes, seeking the destruction, not only of the expensive paper, but of the many pages scattered beneath it, upon which were recorded various pieces of history and lore, I was unable to move as was I watched.

It was not many days after that Nicodemus came to see me. (I suppose if I had been summoned to him, it would be more appropriate for me to refer to him as the Archpatriarch, but as he came to see me, I lay hold on the many years of friendship that open up beneath us and call him by his given name; given his history and circumstances, I am certain he does not mind.) When he called me to this task, I told him that I had already been called. He was not surprised by this, but asked to here of my call anyway.

I will not speak of such sacred things here, but I will describe the curious thing that happened when my boy clumsily destroyed nearly a year's worth of work, and more, when one considers the cost of materials. I will not describe my call, but I will describe the context of that call, for it is of context that I wish to speak.

The paper upon which that ink fell was of uncommon lineage, and thus quite expensive. It came from far in the south, from one of the renowned paper mills in Mechevale, made from the pulp of one of the exotic southern trees. I would not normally discuss the quality of my materials in such a way, but I do so now solely to illuminate the nature of the paper, particularly its texture. It was paper constructed to hold a certain type of paint, also from the south, so the fibers of the page are particularly salient. The significance of this becomes apparent as the ink ended its life on the face of this Mechevali paper.

I watched as the ink was swallowed into the page and, deflected by the fibrous dams, expanded across the surface like frost on the surface of lake touched by a single reed, or the accelerated expansion of a root system, black roots in a field of pale cream soil. As the stream of black from above continued its descent, the shadowy tendrils consumed nearly the whole of the page. At this point, I rushed forward, suddenly liberated from whatever spell the scene had initially placed on me. I have already suggested at the amount of labor it cost me to create the various notes on the desk, and though I am no enemy of work, I knew it would be an ornery task to recreate it. And indeed it was, for it quickly became clear that the page, pregnant with ink, was soon to release its bounty to the pages adjoining it.

And so it is with context. When Nicodemus spoke with me concerning his request, it quickly became apparent that to tell the story he wanted me to tell, I would have to provide a context, I would have to tell the stories that led to the story, the lore that underlay the decisions of those great men and women who we now revere as saints.

So Nicodemus was the falling ink, and that first page, filling up is what eventually became the Empyrean Corpus. But now, as I look back on the volumes and scrolls and notes and everything that led me to the Corpus, I am reminded of those other pages, those other leaves that too were embraced by the tendrils of ink, for in those volumes and scrolls and notes are contained a vast library of marginalia, notes written to myself as I struggled to understand. It is indeed the context to the context that I present here, taken in no particular order, but as I find itand can find the luxury to transcribe it.

I find that as I grow older, as the glory of timelessness draws closer, the Stagnant One in his anger consumes the time I seemed to have once had and the moments in which I used to scribble these notes are now more than a luxury. It seems I can more easily obtain paper from the south than a moment to work, but such is the nature of this Exile.

The name should be obvious, but if it is not, it will be soon.