Chapter 5495: The Dying Jarl!
Chapter 5495: The Dying Jarl!
Far away.
Another body of Ormarr Grimtunge moved quickly through the interior of a vast floating mountain within THE Krazhor-Nul.
The mountain was ancient beyond the framing of any Scale as its hollowed passages stretched wide enough for beings the size of hills to pass one another, walls of primordial black stone veined with rivers of Infinity that pulsed like slow heartbeats, and carvings older than eras were etched across every surface as they depicted coiled Steeds and towering riders whose faces had been worn away by time itself.
Ormarr’s coils carried him through these passages at speed.
He passed other True Lifeforms as he moved. A towering elk-like existence whose antlers held miniature storms nodded to him in greeting. A three-faced woman wreathed in gray flames raised a hand as he passed her chamber. A brutish hound of layered stone rumbled his name in acknowledgment!
To each of them, the Serpent merely nodded back as he did not slow, did not speak, did not coil aside for pleasantries.
The other True Lifeforms watched him pass with knowing looks. When Ormarr Grimtunge moved like this, he moved for only one reason.
He was going straight to the abode of Jarl Erling!
The abode sat at the heart of the floating mountain as its entrance rose taller than the rest of the passages combined, gates of fossilized Steed-bone inlaid with cursed gold that hummed against Ormarr’s scales as he slipped between them. And within...
Within was a hall of pleasure and power both.
The chamber stretched out like a valley given a ceiling as fountains of liquefied Primordial Source rained down in glittering falls, floating platforms drifted lazily through perfumed air, and music from unseen instruments coiled through everything. Upon the platforms and across the vast floors, female True Lifeforms danced. Beings of terrifying grades moved in silks and flames and scales as others lounged upon the titanic form at the chamber’s center, pouring essence-wine, tracing his skin, servicing the mountain of a being who ruled this floating domain!
Jarl Erling!
He was a massive titanic humanoid whose seated form still rose higher than Ormarr’s lifted head, his skin like weathered bronze crossed with glowing fissures of crimson, his beard braided with the bones of things that had once been True! Power radiated off his lounging body in lazy, crushing waves that made Ormarr Grimtunge, a True Lifeform, look and feel utterly tiny!
This was a Cursed Descendant.
And this was how a Cursed Descendant lived! For when a man knows the year of his death, he lives every remaining hour drowning in whatever pleasure he can find. The dancing, the wine, the flesh, the music, none of it was decadence to Jarl Erling. It was life! Every moment of pleasure was a moment stolen back from a curse that had already scheduled his ending, and he collected such moments the way misers collected coin.
At Ormarr’s entrance, Jarl Erling frowned.
The frown alone pressed down through the chamber as the music stumbled, and the dancing True Lifeforms slowed as their annoyed gazes turned toward the Serpent who had interrupted their lord’s pleasures!
Ormarr did not flinch as he sent a single message directly into the Jarl’s mind.
"I have potentially found extremely good Seeds."
The frown on Jarl Erling’s face held for a moment longer.
Then he waved one titanic hand, and the dismissal was absolute. The female True Lifeforms rose and withdrew, silks and flames trailing as more than a few shot Ormarr looks of open annoyance on their way out, and within moments, the vast pleasure hall held only the titan and the Serpent.
"Show me," Jarl Erling rumbled.
Ormarr’s coils shifted as he waved his head, and the air of the chamber bloomed with illusory scenes.
His memories poured out in light. The nest, and the strange clutch that had hatched within it. The party of terrifying beings wet with egg residue. His division of them across light years! And then, the battle. Noah upon his throne of golden sand, the crown, the fusion, the thousands of realms, the hundreds of Miniature Osmontian Dimensional Observable Existences falling like a harvest of burning worlds, the cerulean flames rising to the grandeur of Ananke, and the destruction of Ormarr’s divided body by a man who never once rose from his seat!
"I wanted THE Jarl to know what I am currently doing in your service," Ormarr said as the scenes played. "The party is scattered but formidable. I will send another body to ensure the ones who destroyed my clone-"
He never finished!
Jarl Erling had risen!
The titan crossed his own hall in two strides that shook the fountains as his ancient face came close to the illusory scenes, his cursed eyes narrowing upon two figures within them. Upon the crowned man on the golden throne. And upon the woman in the cerulean-threaded dress who had dissolved into his chest as the Pantheon unfurled!
His eyes were not ordinary eyes.
They were the eyes of a Cursed Descendant who had spent an entire cursed lifetime staring into the weavings of dying Causes, eyes that had dissected ten thousand lifeforms in search of a cure, eyes that saw layers of existence that even True Lifeforms could not perceive! And right now, those ancient cursed eyes were seeing something that made his breath still in his titanic chest.
Less than ten years.
That was what remained of him. Less than ten years before the curse that had hollowed out his lineage since the first transgression finally collected him, and he had long ago stopped believing a solution would arrive in time. He had chosen the wine and the dancing and the flesh because hope was a resource that had run out centuries before his lifespan would!
But was that...
His cursed eyes strained against the illusory memory as they peeled back its layers, reading what Ormarr’s serpentine senses had recorded without understanding!
Were his eyes truly seeing a Living Observable Existence filled with vibrant Causes?!
Not a Steed. Not anything born of this Dimension’s ancient experiments. The woman, the Pantheon, the dimension that man had worn as a body, it was an Observable Existence that was alive! Alive with her own will, her own Intent, and within her, Causes burned vibrant and healthy and whole, First Causes that lived and breathed and thrived inside a living world the way they had never once managed to make a Cause survive inside a Cursed Steed!
Everything the Cursed Descendants had bled this Dimension trying to create for ages beyond counting!
Everything his lineage had been cursed for touching.
It was real, and it was walking around inside a newcomer’s Pantheon, and Ormarr, the loyal, brutal, simple Ormarr, did not even know what he had stumbled into.
Jarl Erling rose to his full height as his voice rolled through the empty hall like a verdict.
"What you have found is now deemed of utmost importance." His massive hand swept out as the mountain itself seemed to lean toward his words.
"Every True Lifeform upon this mountain is yours to command. Take them all if you must. Your task is singular, Ormarr Grimtunge. You are to bring in those beings... without fail!"
...!
His titanic finger pointed into the illusory scenes as he said it, pointed directly at the crowned figure of Noah and at THE Infiniverse beside him.
Ormarr was shocked.
The entire mountain’s True Lifeforms, placed under his command? For a collection task? He had delivered thousands of Seeds to THE Jarl across his long service, and never once had a haul warranted even a tenth of this! But shock did not slow his fervor as the Serpent bowed his massive head and nodded deeply.
"It will be done, Jarl. And... will you be moving yourself?"
Jarl Erling was silent.
The titan turned from the illusory scenes and gazed out through the far wall of his hall, where an opening looked out over the endless storming skies of THE Krazhor-Nul, and behind his ancient cursed eyes, colder calculations turned.
If he made any large moves himself, his brethren would notice. Every Cursed Descendant across this Dimension lived exactly as he lived, drowning in pleasure while desperately, quietly, eternally searching for a solution before their clocks ran out. They watched each other the way starving men watched each other’s plates! If Jarl Erling, who had not left his mountain in centuries, suddenly mobilized in force, every dying Jarl in THE Krazhor-Nul would know within minutes that Erling had found something, and they would descend upon his prize like carrion birds, and ten years was not enough time to win that war.
No. Secrecy was the cage this treasure had to be carried in.
But secrecy could not come at the cost of failure! He had seen what that crowned man did to Ormarr’s divided body from a chair. Whatever he sent had to be overwhelming enough to guarantee success while quiet enough to raise no alarms, and there was exactly one asset in his possession that satisfied both!
Jarl Erling turned back to the Serpent, and his terrifying voice fell upon the hall.
"You are to depart with THE Steed of Oblivion to ensure your success."
...!
Ormarr was even more shocked.
THE Steed of Oblivion! The dying colossus chained in the deepest hollow of this floating mountain, the asset THE Jarl had never once deployed in all of Ormarr’s long service, a creature whose failing Cause still generated an ambient field that made True Lifeforms weep blood merely standing near its chains! For a collection! Why... why was Jarl Erling placing such importance on those lifeforms?
The question burned through the Serpent’s mind.
But Ormarr Grimtunge had survived this long in service to a dying titan by knowing exactly which questions to swallow, and so he did not question! His coils lowered as the True Lifeform knelt before the Cursed Descendant, his massive head bowing to the floor of the pleasure hall.
"I shall follow your will, Jarl."
...!