Chapter 5416: Dora Shath’yar!
Chapter 5416: Dora Shath’yar!
THE Queen Regnant was, by any measure, astonishing.
She had crushed Batiatus without flinching. She had chosen these beings across ages. Batiatus had stood at her throne, among the ones she trusted most in all of existence. And the instant he was confirmed for what he was, she had ended him out of being like a man flicking a dead insect off a table!
Whatever she had felt for him before, and she had surely felt something, none of it bought him a single breath of mercy once the truth was known.
Noah respected it, because it was close to how he moved himself. Loyalty was everything, right up until it became betrayal, and then it was nothing at all.
"Trust is everything," THE Queen Regnant said, her voice settling back toward sweetness, though the cold ran underneath it now. "When there is no trust, everything becomes impossible. The Swords of Existence are a network held together by nothing else. We are scattered across Observable Existences beyond counting, and we hold because we trust, and the moment that trust has a hole in it, the whole of us is in danger."
Her tentacles shifted. "And there is another. Another Follower of THE Sealed One stands among my ranks, here, now. It could be any of you. Just as it was Batiatus, who knelt to me for ages, who I would have named among my dearest. The rest of you deserve my apologies for what comes next. You have them, sincerely. But the follower will be collapsed before me, the way the first one was. So until they are ascertained, nobody leaves this domain. No one."
HUUM!
The reaction rippled through the gathering.
Dame Seraphine’s face was hard with shock, and beneath the shock sat anger. The other Swords wore variations of the same. The grand personages around the throne, the horned and the taloned and the serpentine, offered no protest at the confinement. If anything they did the opposite, drawing themselves up into absolute loyalty, as if to say, test me, search me, do what you must!
There was no resentment in it, only the desperate readiness of the loyal to be cleared.
Noah read each of them as they stood there and sensed nothing off. Nothing at all. Every one of them felt exactly as they should, the loyal and the grand and the furious alike, no seam anywhere to mark the thing they hunted. Which was its own grim piece of information. The second follower was good. Better than Batiatus, who had at least hesitated over his Source Heart. This one had given theirs instantly, had passed the very test that exposed the first, had stood through the crushing of their fellow without a flicker. A being willing to hand over the core of their existence to protect their cover was a being committed, and THE Queen Regnant, for all her power, was going to have a genuinely hard time finding them.
Her Pantheon faded fully, THE Drowned Choir of Ten Thousand Throats receding back into her, the hall becoming only a hall again.
And above Noah, unseen by every being present, THE Estuary Eye pulsed.
It had not stopped once through any of it. Through the crushing, through the prophecy, through the cold decree, the lemniscate pupil had kept turning, kept drinking, the dense existence of the hall and the residue of the Queen’s overwhelming power bleeding up into it in a silent constant stream. The estuary did not care for prophecies or traitors. It only drew, and drew, and drew!
In the next moment, THE Queen Regnant waved her tentacles and called a name into the hall.
"Dora Shath’yar."
HUUM!
Nine women emerged.
They appeared around the hall in matching black Armament, each carrying a spear, and the eyes were the arresting thing, swirling like endless stellar black holes filled with tentacles, dark spirals that pulled at the perception of anything that looked too long. Their skin was bronze, their bodies muscular and powerful, and each of them stood at the Mesozoic Scale, nine Fifth Scale beings!
"My Daughters," THE Queen Regnant said.
"Raised personally, with my own tentacles, across ages. These nine are the youngest of them. They comprise the Legion of Dora Shath’yar."
She turned her writhing mask toward Noah.
"I have already given them their instructions. They will escort you to THE Effluvium Sanctum. There, another will join you, the one I spoke of, to help hone your Intent toward the sharpness you will need. For now, you leave, and no one else does."
HUUM!
The tentacle-filled eyes of the Dora Shath’yar flashed, and the nine of them grasped their spears as waves of Primordial Source covered them and Noah!
But before the hall faded, a single message reached him alone, threaded directly into his existence where no other being could catch it. THE Queen Regnant’s voice, private, meant for him and nothing else.
"I know Seraphine should not be the follower. But I have to be fair, and fairness means she stays here under suspicion with the rest until I am certain. You will lose her from your party for now. My Daughters will take her place, and they are more capable than they appear."
Her voice softened, and grew grand at once.
"You are more than what you understand yourself to be. Anyone who is True is no longer alone, whatever it feels like. Anyone who is True begins, sooner or later, to Inherit weavings that trace back to the ones even Primeval Ones looked up to. You are likely connected to, or forming a connection to, Those Who Remain. So whatever it feels like, standing where you stand, against what you stand against, hear this. You are not alone. You are not alone."
A pause, and then the last of it, the sweetness falling away entirely, leaving only the weight.
"Going against THE Sealed One is the most daunting thing a being can choose. So I will give you the only counsel that has ever mattered against him. Persevere. He came unfathomably close, once. He came within reach of what he wanted before he was stopped, and stopping him took everything existence had. So whatever it costs you, whatever he sends, however near he draws.
Persevere. Persevere.
PERSEVERE!"
BOOM!
And with that word ringing through his existence, the same word a dead Sir William had spent his last breath on, the same word that burned out of his own heart every second, everything faded away!