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i thought this was an interesting development for the storyline. now that we know we have anathema on our soul granted by guthix, perhaps that explains why sliske is supposedly living on within us after he "died." i also thought that this might explain how xau-tak is seemingly all-powerful, perhaps xau-tak is a being of anathema and is why he is able to ruin many worlds and even try to corrupt gielinor without any response from the elder gods. the universe probably has its own balance and while there are elder gods of creation, perhaps xau-tak is among a pantheon of elder gods of destruction. he also has a somewhat similar name, like all the elder gods have 3 letter names and xau-tak is just two three letter names hyphenated together. i've also been very curious how he could somehow abduct kranon the dragonkin and remove the curse of jas from him, then redesign him to be a different creature. it would make a lot of sense if xau-tak is an elder god that uses anathema to destroy the creations of the regular elder gods.

there was no direct information to suggest xau-tak uses anathema or that sliske is living in our shadow anima portion of our soul, but i could see it being a plausible explanation for a lot of unanswered things. just my theory

i've also been curious if mah was intentionally hurt by the other elder gods because she uses anathema, or something like that, and they were afraid of what it could mean to their survival. we still don't know who hurt mah, just that she was hurt deliberately according to seren, and there's not many people who could do that anyway. i would assume xau-tak would have targeted freneskae in the past, but maybe because mah also uses shadow anima he decided not to? not any strong evidence here, but maybe mah is of that same nature xau-tak is, or maybe xau-tak is just a regular god who is unusually powerful and spreads across many worlds

also while not directly explained, it loosely implies the black stone dragon has some sort of connection to shadow anima. we also know that the black stone dragons were created by experimenting with xau-tak's black stones, which has a mysterious corrupting effect, so i don't think it's very far fetched to make the connection that xau-tak is a being that uses anathema. you can extrapolate that to how, which suggests either xau-tak has the knowledge kerapac has to harness anathema (without elder god resistance) or xau-tak itself is an elder god that thrives off this substance