Chapter 5377: Quasi! III
Chapter 5377: Quasi! III
"And Paradox?" the master asked. "What is Paradox, that it should be one with that?"
Erwin’s Intent shone grander still. He was nostalgic as he felt like he had returned to eons ago, a peasant still learning from his dear teacher!
"Paradox is two true things that cannot both be true, held together anyway, refusing to resolve." He let the words settle.
"And what is a being, Master, if not that? I am the same being I was an age ago and I am nothing like him. I have changed completely and I have never once stopped being myself. Both true. Neither resolving. Every existence is a paradox carried forward through time, a thing that is continuous and a thing that is utterly transformed, both at once, and the information of it holds both truths without ever choosing. That is why my identity and my Paradox became the same thing. Because to be me is to be a contradiction that does not resolve, and to hold all the information of myself is to hold that contradiction whole. Information is the record. Paradox is the shape the record takes when the thing it records is alive." He looked at his master.
"I am both because I am both. That is the only proof I have, and it is the only proof that has ever mattered."
THE Primordial Paradox nodded slowly, and something proud moved through his vast features, as if he wss proud of his student!
"Well answered," he said.
His tone hardened, the warmth giving way to something colder. "At this moment, having become what we have become. What should we do, you and I, against the ones who tried to erase our information? Who tried to take our records, our selves, our identities, and convert them into mindless things? The Gilded Ones who sent the Ordnances down. What is owed to beings who attempt the one thing existence forbids, the erasure of what was?"
Erwin smiled, and it was not a kind smile, and his Intent blazed.
"The complete cessation of their information," he said simply.
"They tried to erase ours. So we erase theirs. Not their lives, Master. That is too small and too brief. Their information. The record of their having been. We make it so that when they are gone, the trace of them goes too, the one punishment existence is not supposed to allow, turned back on the ones who reached for it first." He raised his newly formed visage.
"Let us pay a visit to THE Braneworld. Let us go up the chain they came down. And let us let the Gilded Ones know, personally, of our adversity. Our identities. The two things they thought they could take."
BOOM!
With those words, teacher and student raised their heads toward the realm above, and the Gilded Ones, who had spent their pride so freely and made so many enemies so carelessly, were inadvertently inviting adversity toward themselves from yet another direction, one more avenue among the many now converging on Houses that thought themselves untouchable.
---
In THE Braneworld Observable Existence, in a citadel of silver towers held by the Ubergulden House, the work of a different adversity was already underway.
The citadel rose in spires of amplified Acedia and Superbius, the muted silver of slothful pride, and within one of its many towers, deep in an isolated domain sealed off from the rest, a horrifying scene held perfectly still.
A Triassic Scale Acedia Gilded One stood frozen in place. A Fourth Scale being, formidable, the kind of existence that reshaped territory with its Intent, and it could not move. Around it, lower down, Devonian Paleozoic Scale Gilded Ones knelt, their heads bowed, their proud existences lowered to the floor of the sealed domain. And the thing they knelt toward, the thing the Triassic Scale being trembled before, was a young-looking figure who somehow also felt impossibly old, his form faintly illusory at the edges, as though he were not entirely present in the room at all.
THE Great Usurper.
He stood among the kneeling Gilded Ones in his borrowed half-there form, Abaddon’s reach extended into this sealed silver tower, and he regarded the trembling Fourth Scale being with the warm patient confidence that was his whole nature.
"Following the connection was easy," he said, conversational, almost kind.
"The ones who controlled the Ordnances, the ones who gave the order to detonate them down below. They were all connected, all the way up the chain of command, and a chain is only ever a road for whoever decides to walk it the other way. So I walked it. Slowly. Carefully. While all of you carried your high pride around like a lantern, so certain that nothing could possibly go wrong, so certain you were the ones doing the converting."
He gestured gently at the kneeling Gilded Ones.
"I simply proceeded, one at a time, binding you under my banner. Unity. There is no need to struggle against it. You are merely the first. The first of a great many."
HUUM!
The Triassic Scale Gilded One fought it. It strained against the stillness, its first-rarity Intent flickering to life, trying to erupt, to break the hold, to call for help or strike out or simply move.
And it could not, because Infinity from a unique being backed THE Great Usurper, Noah’s Infinity threaded into the Usurper’s reach, and against Infinity and Unity both the Fourth Scale being’s struggle was a candle against a tide.
"Stop that shit," THE Great Usurper said, mildly, and the Intent guttered out.
He let the silence settle, and then he laid out the shape of the thing, the genuine pleasure of a being explaining an elegant plan to the people it would consume.
"The hard part is finished," he said. "Reaching the Acedia command chain, climbing it, taking the first of you. That was the difficult work, and it is done. What comes now is easy, and it is beautiful, and you are going to help me do it whether you wish to or not." His half-there form turned, taking in the kneeling Gilded Ones, the frozen Fourth Scale being, the sealed silver domain.
"I made a promise. To a man you will never meet, that I would take care of this side of things. So here is how I keep it. I am going to bring every Acedia Gilded One in this entire Braneworld Observable Existence under my banner of Unity. All of them. And I will not do it by force, marching from citadel to citadel where anyone could see me coming. I will do it through you."
He smiled.
"Every one of you I bind will carry Unity onward. You will make your ordinary trips to the other citadels, the way Acedia Gilded Ones always have, visiting your own kind, raising no suspicion at all, because why would a brother visiting a brother raise suspicion? And at each one, quietly, you will pass it on. Citadel by citadel. Brother by brother. Spreading silently, patiently, beneath the notice of every proud Superbius and every watchful Ealdor, until the day they look up and find that the entire Acedia foundation of this Observable Existence already answers to me, and was already answering to me, long before any of them thought to check." His old young eyes shone.
"You built your power on Acedia and Superbius and the certainty that nothing could touch you from below. And in the end, your downfall will be the one thing you never thought to guard against."
He let the word hang in the silver dark.
"Unity."
HUUM!