Chapter 5408: THE Infinite Liar I
Chapter 5408: THE Infinite Liar I
From the throne, THE Queen Regnant’s unique head pulsed, the writhing mass of pale tendrils tightening horridly around the clattering aperture, and the moment it did, Dame Seraphine and the other Swords dropped to their knees.
They knelt as though they had seen something too grand to remain standing before, beings of THE Mesozoic Scale folding down without hesitation. And it was not only them. The many shrouded lifeforms gathered near the throne bowed as well, and as they bowed, their shrouds of Primordial Source fell away, because once the Queen had revealed herself, none of them could remain hidden either.
Noah saw them briefly, for the first time. Most held humanoid shapes, but few were cleanly so. One carried great curving horns of bone that swept back from a regal head. Another’s arms ended in feathered raptor talons that flexed against the stone. A third had a lower body that tapered into something serpentine, coiled beneath it, and a fourth’s skin shifted with patterns that did not stay still. Beings of grand and varied form, each one bowing, each one revealed in deference to the thing on the throne.
In the heavy silence, a voice echoed out.
It came from that pulsing wriggling visage, and it was sweet. Calm and sweet, almost gentle, a voice a being might use to soothe a child. And yet it caused Noah’s existence to buzz the moment it reached him, because beneath the sweetness he felt something, the certainty that this voice alone, if it chose, could seriously wound his Source. Not her claws. Not her tentacles. Her voice!
"Back then," THE Queen Regnant said, "countless eons ago, THE School of Existence was open to anyone seeking ascension. And at its center sat the one we called THE Sealed One."
As she spoke, an illusory manifestation bloomed in the hall, a grand structure rising out of nothing, a school of light and learning with a single figure seated at its heart.
"He was magnificent, truly. He wore robes woven from the silk of dead infinity that wept silent blue tears." The illusory figure’s robes shimmered, weeping their soft blue.
"Many thought those tears were for them, for the suffering across existence. In that endless chaos, many lifeforms crawled out and looked at him and saw a savior. A father. He took them in as disciples, you see. He chose the grandest things existence could spawn. He took the exceptional Source Lifeforms, and he took the Infinite Lifeforms."
The hall filled with illusory disciples, grand beings gathering at the feet of the weeping figure!
"For an entire Age, he treated them with a tenderness that would make a mother weep," she said, and the illusion showed it, the figure moving among his disciples with impossible gentleness. "When a Source Lifeform staggered under the weight of its own expanding Source, THE Sealed One would place his massive, pale hand upon its Source. He would whisper to them. He told them they were his legacy, that every tear they shed in this harsh existence was just water for the seed of their ultimate ascension. He fed them the dust and causes of newly born Observable Existences. He made sure they grew dense, rich, and bursting with raw reality."
The illusory disciples swelled, growing heavier, richer, brighter.
"The Infinite Lifeforms worshiped the very ground he walked on, shattering their own infinities just to converge into a single point of absolute obedience before his throne. They grew so fat on his teachings. They became so heavy with existential weight." Her sweet voice did not change. "They had no idea they were just being marbled. Like prize cattle."
HUUM!
The illusion shifted, and the tenderness in the air of the hall began, very slightly, to curdle.
"It happened on the final day of the Age," she said. "The disciples had all gathered, humming with the excitement of a promised paradise. THE Sealed One stood above them on his dais. He didn’t say a word. He just reached up, unclasped whatever mask he had put up, and revealed his true self."
The illusory figure reached up, and unclasped, and the warm golden aura the disciples had loved for millions of years vanished in an instant.
"In an instant, the warmth they had loved vanished, replaced by the suffocating, putrid stench of rotting existence. Before anyone could run, the sky turned upside down. The entire domain warped, compressing the surrounding dimensions of existence into a massive, ribbed mortar." The illusion bent and folded around the hall, the gathered disciples suddenly trapped within the curving walls of an enormous grinding bowl. "The brutality of it. It was beautiful in its absolute perfection."
WAA!
"A great Source Lifeform screamed out to him," she continued, and the illusion showed one grand being lifting itself above the others, reaching toward the figure on the dais. "It begged him. It asked why he was doing this to his own children. To the ones who loved him."
"Do you know what THE Sealed One said? He looked down with eyes that held no malice at all. Only a cold hunger. He told them that a farmer does not hate his pigs when the winter comes. He simply gets hungry."
The illusory pestle descended.
"Then the invisible pestle came down," THE Queen Regnant said. "And he didn’t grant them a quick end. To extract the purest essence, the suffering had to be prolonged, until their despair crystallized into their very core existence. The Infinite Lifeforms tried to flee into alternative infinite possibilities, but he had already woven a net of absolute negation around every possible future. They were dragged back into the crushing mortar, screaming in a chorus of ten thousand identical voices as their infinities were forcibly flattened and pulverized into a thick, glowing paste."
The illusion showed it, the infinities collapsing, the ten thousand voices, the paste.
"The Source Lifeforms were stripped of their fundamental weavings like flesh from bone, their consciousness liquefied and mixed into the slurry." Her voice remained perfectly calm. "For seven days and seven nights, the grinding never stopped. He just sat on his throne, rhythmically rotating his hand, manipulating the pestle until the screams faded into a low, vibrating hum."
The illusory figure sat, and turned his hand, and turned it, and turned it.
"When it was over, an entire Age of exceptional life had been condensed into three small, gray, unremarkable spheres," she said. "The Existential Pills."
Three small grey spheres hung in the illusory air of the hall, unremarkable, almost disappointing in their plainness.
"He picked up the first one," THE Queen Regnant said. "If you looked closely at the translucent shell, you could still see the tiny, trapped faces of his most devoted disciples. Frozen in everlasting, microscopic agony." The illusion brought one sphere close, and within its shell the small faces could be seen, screaming without sound.
"And do you know what he did? He tossed it into his maw. He chewed slowly, listening to the final, muffled pops of their existence dissolving against his tongue. Smiling, as their stolen existence and potential turned his withered flesh ever so glorious."
The illusion of the figure smiled, and chewed, and the small faces popped one by one, and his withered flesh grew radiant.
The manifestation faded from the hall, and THE Queen Regnant’s writhing head focused fully on Noah.
"And all of us know of this tale," she said, sweet and quiet, "because he publicized the record himself. He shared it with lifeforms far grander than us, the way a hunter mounts a trophy. He wanted it known. He wanted it remembered exactly as it happened."
The clattering teeth ringed the dark aperture, and the tendrils writhed, and the sweet voice came one final time, and beneath the sweetness was a question with a blade folded inside it.
"So tell me, O New Sword of Mine," THE Queen Regnant said. "How exactly did you survive an encounter with anything related to THE Sealed One?"
HUUM!