Coming out of the Deep’s friendly monologue to Oryx, we immediately move into an odd dream sequence. This dream is told form Oryx’s point of view and takes us back to his childhood back at the Osmium Court.

In this dream, Oryx (or should we can him Aurash?) is heading to his father’s orrery when he notices his sisters are chasing after him. They are ripping up the road behind him with their swords. And the road stones they are ripping up are shaped like tablets with odd writting on them. Oryx runs from them only to be tripped and slammed to the ground by his father who asks him why he wasn’t prepared for his sisters to move against him. Oryx starts crying, wanting to know why his dad won’t help him, but all his father does is prepare to tip some strange “black sun” into his son’s throat.

Oryx sees his jaws and teeth in the reflection of the anti-glare goggles his father is wearing and, with no other choices left, begins to eat his father! All the while his father tells him what he is doing is good and majestic. When he is done, Oryx looks back and realizes that his sisters have torn up the road behind him and that he has no way to get back where he came from.

Obviously, this dream is highly symbolic, though not confusingly so. There are several parts we can identify:

  • The road stones covered in writting that Oryx’s sisters are tearing up are Oryx’s Tablets of Ruin he laid down in his Throne World to allow him to approach and commune with The Deep. It’s telling that these tablets in Oryx’s dreams are held up by or overlaid on worms, much as the Hive’s power is based on the power of the worm gods.
  • Could the goggles that Oryx’s father is wearing to save his vision during lighting storms and sea fire have been to preserve his “night vision” for watching Fundament’s moons? He was at or near his orrery in the dream so that makes some sense.
  • I’m not aware of any direct correlation between the black sun that Oryx’s father attempts to force feed him and anything within Destiny’s universe. In this instance it would probably seem to represent poison or death.
  • What Oryx does to his father, eat him in self defense, is pretty much what the worm gods and the Deep have been telling Oryx to do for tens of thousands of years now.
  • One minor but interesting thing is that this dream about teeth is that it is referenced in the description of the Warlock’s Voidfang Vestments which says: “YOU WILL DREAM OF TEETH AND NOTHING ELSE – scratched behind a buckle” That’s kinda creepy. Maybe the Voidfang Vestments were made by a Guardian who survive the assault on the moon? Or by Toland the Shattered who we’ll learn a good deal about later?
  • And finally, given that his father is telling him that he should be prepared for betrayal and that his father calls being eaten in self defense “majestic” we can pretty easily conclude that Oryx’s father here represents the Deep itself. It is something of a father figure to him at this point and it has been teaching him that existence is defined by ones ability to exist.

Waking up, Oryx muses that he is glad to know that the universe is a thing that run on death. He realizes that the races he and his Hive have destroyed hate him but he is, perhaps now more than ever, firmly committed to the Deep’s view that the only way to make something good that can’t be broken is to break everything else first.

But Oryx also soon realizes that he has been stranded and cut off from his flow of tribute. In fact, he says he is lost somewhere strange. I submit that Oryx has actually been killed just as dead as he previously killed his two sisters when the Hive was losing the war against the Ecumene. I think he is trapped in such a deep dark corner of his Throne World that he does not recognize it and cannot find a way out.

I think this for two reasons:

  1. Soon after this, Xivu Arath writes one of her declarative missives like the one she wrote near the very beginning of the Books of Sorrow. Remember the outlaying of all the dangers of Fundament? This time, Xivu Arath notes that she once allowed Oryx to kill her and that she was resurrected only when he described her. In the very next section titled “RESURRECTION” she declares that she will now describe Oryx. Her description is neat and a bit frightening to read (go do so if you have time) but I think the important part here is that she had to make this description of her brother at all.
  2. We’ll cover this more next time, but Oryx describes making his way back from this strange place he was lost in as fighting his way out of hell. By now, Oryx has been killed many many times. First by his sister during the war against the Ammonites and later several times by the forces of the Ecumene, but each time he was just thrown back into his Throne World. A place where he is generally untouchable and has a great deal of power. A place that is hardly a hell. So I think his saying that he had to fight his way out of hell is very significant.

Ultimately, trapped in this hell, Oryx decides that he can no longer sit alone at the top of his pyramid as one of three equals leading the Hive. He decides he needs children to guarantee that he alone is the most powerful at the top of the Hive.

Sources:
XXXIII: When do monsters have dreams
XXXIV: More beautiful to know
XXXV: This Love Is War
XXXVI: Eater of Hope
I: Predators

Previous: 18: Majestic Battles and Waves
Next: 20: The Eater of Hope and His Sisters