Chapter 5578: NOBLESSE! II
Chapter 5578: NOBLESSE! II
"What the hell did you just do? And how?"
Anaximander had come up behind Noah, and he was staring at Ryaenara with open marvel!
He could sense the complete change of her existence, and it was not a change of degree. Her weavings did not read as elevated, or healed, or empowered. They read as absent!
A being stood before him, undeniably present, radiating quiet crimson nobility, and every instrument of perception he owned reported that she did not display much immenisty at all.
Noah was already walking toward Hvitrmarr, a fresh drop of blood rising to his fingertip.
"My existence has begun living truly as myself," he said, beginning to draw. The rune took form stroke by patient stroke, waves and strings gathering in the blood.
"Everything I do now comes from that. I am using my blood as a resource to alter existence itself, because my blood carries everything I am, and I am no longer something existence gets a say in. This time in particular, it is the alteration of one’s Lifeline."
WAA!
The rune turned slowly in the air before the kneeling White Steed, and he began a second one beside it, for the Laestrygonian, speaking as he carved.
"I’ve begun thinking of a Lifeline as a thread. Spun for you at your beginning and woven into frameworks you never chose, by hands you will never see. Every Scale that measures you holds that thread. Every authority that curses you grips it. Every framework that promises you power is also a loom that owns your weave. Beings spend their whole existences climbing ladders with this preset notion..." His fingertip finished a spiral of joined strands.
"My Mark cuts the thread free of every framework. Your Lifeline leaves the frameworks entirely, and binds to me instead. Simple enough."
...!
Simple enough! Oh, so simple!
He looked between the two kneeling figures.
"This does change you bindings to fully be...behind me."
Neither of them moved from their knees.
Noah nodded once, and released the runes.
HUUM!
The two marks flowed into them, and the transformations began.
Hvitrmarr rose off the sand as her humanoid form dissolved outward into her true one, the colossal white dragon unfurling against the obelisk light, and then the Mark’s authority moved through her from Lifeline to scale-tips!
Her pearl white body deepened and glossed, alabaster taking on an undertone of living crimson, as though her whiteness now ran above a tide of blood. Her wing membranes thinned and cleared into sheets of red gold, light passing through them the way it passes through stained glass in an old hall. Her twin spiral ivory horns banded themselves in rings of red gold, her mane of white flame threaded through with ribbons of crimson fire, and along her jaw the elegant line of her fangs lengthened, refined, predatory, the mouth of something that drinks its conquests rather than merely winning them!
When her eyes opened, the gold ring pupils burned with a new center: bloody red, and behind the red, a quiet turning light of infinity.
She was still the White Steed. She was now also, unmistakably, something more magisterial!
And Damodred!
The Laestrygonian...his proportions loosened at their edges, joints suggesting themselves in numbers the eye declined to count, his silhouette gaining a margin of half-present limbs that existed mainly in the corner of one’s perception and withdrew when looked at directly.
The ancient blindfold of hands across his face changed first and most: every hand of it turned bloody crimson gold, fingers lengthening, and then the whole lattice of them opened outward from the center like a terrible flower.
And at the very center, revealed, a single cyclops eye burned.
Its iris was vast and dark. Its pupil was red, and the red was not a shape but a congregation: countless minute hands, joining and rejoining, clasped into the form of a pupil that flexed when it moved. The eye swept the domain once, and the domain felt swept!
|The marked existence of HVITRMARR presents a unique transformation.|
|While all that you carried was cast out, her Causes were never carried. They are part of her existence itself, seated within her organs, born into her flesh by the hands of Those Who Remain. They cannot be removed from her, and so they are transforming WITH her.|
|Her nine Causes are becoming her own: unthreaded from the frameworks that seated them, remaking themselves within her organs under your authority. The process is ongoing. Their transformation may provide weavings of what your own Causes could be.|
|HVITRMARR has become a Noblesse Blood Apostle of the third tier: BLOOD DUKE.|
|DAMODRED has become a Noblesse Blood Apostle of the third tier: BLOOD DUKE.|
...!
Noah read the prompt about her organs twice, and set it carefully into the front of his mind, beside the Cause-replacement puzzle it had just illuminated!
The two finished beings bowed to him, dragon and Laestrygonian, and he checked their status panels as they did.
|STATUS PANEL: HVITRMARR- NOBLESSE BLOOD APOSTLE, BLOOD DUKE|
|VERITAS: 3|
|PROVENANCE: 0|
|POTENTIA: 9|
|PONDUS: 3|
|STATUS PANEL: DAMODRED- NOBLESSE BLOOD APOSTLE, BLOOD DUKE|
|VERITAS: 3|
|PROVENANCE: 0|
|POTENTIA: 10|
|PONDUS: 3|
Noah nodded at their power and their advancements.
"As of now, I basically have a backbone of my own power and forces," he said. "This Dimension still has another Dimension fusing into it, and armies of Infinite Lifeforms remain scattered through both. I think you two would be able to take care of them, yes?"
He looked at Hvitrmarr and Damodred, and both of them nodded with immensity, the dragon’s great head dipping and the cyclops eye closing once in assent.
Then Noah’s voice went grand, and cold.
"Any who fight, kill them. Those simply living within the Dimension, and however things will be once these Dimensions finish fusing, will know that they are under a new rule. THE Ymnaros, for now, will be a base of operations. The first Dimension I will have under my rule, and protect." A pause the length of a decree being sealed. "For now, go stabilize it."
He gave the command to Hvitrmarr and Damodred, and nodded to Anaximander, who smiled wryly at having been reduced, in the span of one afternoon to a courier service. He waved his hands.
WAP!
The two of them disappeared.
Noah then turned to Ryaenara. She was already looking at him, her crimson eyes carrying utmost conviction, her hands folded before her red gold robes.
He nodded.
"Let us see about Ulf."
Times of peace were rare. Even as he moved to cover many things at once, his Provenance Essence continued its patient refining of THE Aurate Collar of the First Purity against his chest, working into bones older than frameworks, and beneath all of it his mind kept turning, constantly, on what more he could design for his own grand new system of existence.
There was so much to be done!