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1 " According to legend, Path Kethona was first visited by Forerunners during our greatest period of exploration, over ten million years ago. Yet there was substantial doubt that voyage had ever happened. Records had long ago vanished. Not even Haruspis, entrusted with studying the Domain, could access those memories. "
― Greg Bear , Halo: Silentium
2 " Stars I understand. They shed light and give life. It is the emptiness between that haunts me. "
3 " Humans believe in nothingness, in zeros. It is one of their distinguishing traits. They keep inventing nothing. Forerunners know otherwise. "
4 " It’s out there,” Bitterness says. “Your monster. Mendicant Bias. Can’t you feel it? "
5 " Some adopted new strategies for survival; they went dormant. Others became dust that could regenerate our past forms; time rendered this dust defective. It brought only disease and misery; but that was good, we saw the misery and found it good. "
6 " No more will. No more freedom. Nothing new but agonizing death and never good shall come of it. We are the last of those who gave you breath and form, millions of years ago. We are the last of those your kind defied and ruthlessly destroyed. We are the last Precursors. And now we are legion. "
7 " Throughout my life, I sought power and profit for myself, for my rate. Now, at long last, I think I understand the meaning of a crime against the Mantle. After this, no need to seek balance. I will await my penance here. "
8 " If we who are honored with life do not perceive the obvious, then we are forced to live it again, around another corner, from another angle. "
9 " I now understand why humans smile. Forerunners have done all they can to banish smiles. Not all smiles are about greetings and joy. Some smile in shared pain. "
10 " MY HUSBAND … HAS become a child again. But not any sort of child I’d be proud of. Not any sort of child I would trust. "
11 " We were not then powerful enough to erase all evidence of the Precursors, to destroy their star roads and citadels and other artifacts. And so we left at least one Precursor behind, to live out dreams of vengeance and hatred, to lay down plans in cold and darkness at the heart of a lost asteroid—over millions of years. "
12 " If the Domain is destroyed, I have condemned my husband to an eternity of darkness, silence, with only his own rage and madness to keep him company. "
13 " But ingenuity is often indistinguishable from foolish play, and foolish play is one of those traits I find most endearing about humanity. "
14 " This is solute, which will cause every animal killed by Halo action to instantly decay into component molecules. This will avert an ecological miasma. But it could also be construed as a way to hide a tremendous crime from later investigators. "
15 " The asteroids interfere with the collapsing function of each emerging ship; in effect, either forcing them to abandon the transit, or to combine asteroid mass with the ship’s. "
16 " UR-DIDACT: This being was not the Primordial I encountered on Charum Hakkor, but something else entirely—though it retained the Primordial’s motives and thoughts and memories. It was a Gravemind—the Gravemind, more accurately. It was the Primordial’s final act of revenge. "
17 " Only the threat of the Flood itself could have forced me back from utterly extirpating humanity. "
18 " You could not accept our judgment, could not bear up under your inferiority, so you reached out and did what we never expected from those we gave design and life and the change that is thought. "
