Chapter 5482: The Roads Between II
Chapter 5482: The Roads Between II
This one was harder to look at. A Dimension of pale vastness, its geography refusing to settle, mountains that might have been ruins, seas that might have been scars, and running through the center of it all, a wound. A tremendous, ancient severing, healed over the way land heals over a buried river, visible only because the whole Dimension still bent around it.
"This is where they cut him," Ryaenara said quietly. "THE Sealed One. This is the Dimension where the only alliance in history, True Lifeforms and Primeval Lifeforms together, brought him down and carved him apart and sealed the pieces. Every True being knows this place. Most will not enter it."
"Why?"
She shook her head slowly. "The battle against THE Sealed One is the second most important thing that ever happened in this Dimension. Its history runs far deeper than him. He was brought there to be cut deliberately. Because of who already resided there." Her voice dropped, and into it came something Noah had never heard from her before. Reverence. Actual reverence!
"A Lineage of Existence is situated in that Dimension. One tracing directly back to one of Those Who Remain. They are called THE Veilborn Progeny."
The illusion shifted, and figures appeared within the pale vastness. Not giants. Not horrors. Beings of ordinary scale, walking the bent geography like inhabitants, and yet the ghost-light rendered each of them with a strange doubled quality, as if something enormous stood folded inside every silhouette.
"Every framework you know builds power upward. A being is born small, climbs Scales, forges an Intent, earns appendages through becoming. THE Veilborn Progeny are born the other way. At birth, each of them arrives with an Intent already emerging, a seed of identity woven into them before their first breath, inherited down the Lineage from the one they trace back to. And they inherit more than Intent. True Appendages pass down their bloodline the way lesser beings pass down eye color. A child of the Progeny might open their eyes on their first day already carrying an anatomy that ordinary beings would need a second birth and ages of becoming to grow."
Noah studied the doubled figures in the illusion, and his own appendages sat quietly in his awareness. The Eye. The Vigil. The Root. Ancient and new. Wholly his!
"Each of them is a living junction. One parent line reaching all the way back to one of Those Who Remain, the other planted in common existence. They are not that ancient power, and they are not ordinary beings, and they spend their whole lives being both and neither."
Ryaenara watched the figures walk their bent land. "They guard that Dimension. They have guarded it since before THE Sealed One had a name worth fearing. When existence needed somewhere to cut him, somewhere the pieces could be held down by something older than he was, the alliance did not choose that Dimension for its geography."
She closed her hand, and the pale vastness folded away, and the temple was just a temple again.
Noah held her gaze for a moment.
"And which of those two Dimensions," he said, "is the one you left open in the air behind you when the map came down?"
Ryaenara laughed, bright and delighted, and did not answer.
She didn’t answer him. She showed him instead.
Her hand waved, and another manifestation bloomed in the temple air, a third Dimension rendered in ghost-light above her palm.
"I was thinking of another place entirely," Ryaenara said.
Another place entirely. Noah looked at it and turned the whole situation over. She had shown him the famous Dimensions, the scoured ones and the guarded ones, and now here was her actual recommendation, prepared in advance. It was, he had to admit, exactly what a good guide should do. And that was precisely the problem with it.
After all, what did every option she offered have in common? She knew them. She had weighed them. Whatever waited inside had already been measured against what she believed he could survive. A curated road was a safe road, and a safe road taught nothing.
He shook his head.
"You are a guide, yes. But I actually wish to try something else. Not any of the Dimensions you know of. A Dimension that even you might not know, one that I find with my own Intent. If it is something you do not know, then it will truly be a place of adversity. You picking something right now would make this feel like a simple training regimen." He met her eyes. "And I do not need training."
His existence exuded a quiet, boundless confidence as he said it, the temple stones humming faintly beneath the weight of a being who meant every word.
Ryaenara hummed, tapping one finger against her chin. Then her smile spread.
"That may actually be more interesting," she admitted. "Where would the first fished Dimension of someone with Boundless Potential lead? Even I want to know the answer now. Okay. Hopefully you don’t send us somewhere even I have no control." She stretched her arms overhead, loose and easy.
"But I am game. As carefree as I might act, I will do everything I can to get closer to a solution for my little brother. I am ready to go right now."
"And this works out nicely on another front. I can report to THE Sealed One honestly. I followed Osmont to a place even I did not know. No lie in it anywhere. And in a Dimension across space and time, I will simply... lose contact with him for a while." Her smile thinned. "A much needed break."
She seemed to be running through many arrangements at once behind her vibrant eyes. In truth, the only one left unprepared was Noah, and he did not intend to stay that way long.
He breathed out rivers of Osmontian Source Infinity, cerulean currents rolling through the temple, and his eyes sharpened.
"We will also not be alone. Multiple True Lifeforms will be coming. When you bring back the Dora Shath’yar, bring in THE Creature as well. The team set up by THE Queen Regnant will continue its mission against THE Sealed One, just across space and time. And I have a few others I will bring, if you can grant them access to your Dimension."