Chapter 5599: Service and Employment!
Chapter 5599: Service and Employment!
Noah watched the newborn Sovereign absorb his words, and he was curious how Skallagrim would react.
Because the autonomy was real, but so was the Mark! Skallagrim held his own level of independence, the first Apostle who could disagree and refuse, but he was still marked, still an Apostle of his Infinite Sanguine Mana, and if this being wanted to have a battle of contention regarding his own existence, Noah held a lot of leeway of control that he could exert at any moment he chose.
For now, he did not exert it.
He was... curious.
Skallagrim’s crimson gold seas turned slowly as many things moved through them, and when he finally spoke, his deep voice came out measured.
"Descendant of THE True Human Emperor." He said the words carefully, testing their weight. "Do you understand what you are asking my existence to accept? THE Sleepless Fiend is not a father the way small kinds have fathers. He is a personage of such immense power that distance means nothing before him."
The Sovereign’s hand closed slowly. "I have brethren purer than me. Brethren more powerful than me, who know more than me, who have stood closer to the center of the line than I ever will. And every single one of them trembles at his name without ever once being near him. Not from his messages. Not from his workings. From the simple knowledge that he exists, and that we atem from him." His eyes fixed on the clones.
"That is what sat at the root of my line for my whole existence. So answer me plainly, Cure-Giver. Why is it that I should follow you... over someone I have referred to as Father?"
Noah’s reply came out calm, and level, and utterly tyrannical.
"Because it was not one of Those Who Remain who gave you salvation."
"..."
"You were about to die. Very soon. And in all that time, with all that immensity you tremble before... none of Them came down to help you. Should things have played out, should I have not visited THE Krazhor-Nul Dimension...there would be no Jarl Skallagrim"
Noah’s pulsed as he wanted to see if a motherfucker could be grateful!
"I came down into your opened chest with my own hands, and I did something none of Those Who Remain has ever done for you or for any Cursed Progeny. So when you weigh him against me, weigh THAT. The life you are standing in, and the immensity you currently hold... is thanks to me!"
BOOM!
The words landed across the between-space with a weight of their own, and heavy silence followed them!
Could a fucker be grateful?!
Skallagrim looked down at his hands. He turned them over slowly.
At last, the Sovereign sighed.
"Too many lifeforms move across existence without honor," he said quietly. "I have watched it my whole life. Beings who take and never mark the debt. Beings who are saved and then sharpen knives for their saviors, because gratitude sits heavy and they would rather walk light."
His crimson gold eyes rose. "Everything else about me was written by another hand. My power, my curse, my months. But honor is the one sentence a being gets to write for itself, in its own hand, with no ancestor holding the pen. It is the only clause that is truly ours. And I...will not write mine crooked on the very first day of my freedom."
Oh?
"So, for having my life and my salvation... I will not be ungrateful. I have my own trueness now, and it prevents me from submitting myself to another. I will not kneel to you. I will not call you Master." He inclined his head.
"But I will hang around you for the near future. And I will make a move when you tell me to. Call it... service, and employment."
...!
Noah’s eyes were sharp as he said nothing at this!
Service and employment! A perfect-twenty attribute Sovereign wearing a shroud of unpaid deaths, negotiating himself into position of service! He let the words stand unanswered, neither accepted nor corrected, and instead turned his gaze downward.
To the steed.
The little cursed thing that had screamed through the storm about blasphemy! We should live and die as they wish! We should not rebel! Noah’s gaze settled on it coldly.
’This fucker was cursed to death by them... and it is still this loyal and fearful?’
The steed’s eyes trembled and dropped, as if they could not meet Noah’s at all, its whole small frame pressed low against the dark.
And as if he could see Noah’s cold gaze from where he floated, Skallagrim drifted down toward the creature, and laid one immense hand on its trembling neck.
"I feel sentimental with this one," the Sovereign said. "The last steed under me. All the others are gone, spent on the crossing, spent on the hunt, spent on me. This one carried me to my salvation on shaking legs." His hand moved once along its neck, almost gently. Then his voice cooled.
"Can you cure him, the way you cured the white one?" A pause. "And little steed. If you say anything the Cure-Giver does not like... then maybe you can find your salvation elsewhere."
...!
The Cursed Steed trembled harder, and its gaze went further down.
Noah regarded it for a moment, and inside, his thoughts were already pricing the work.
He had no qualms curing another steed. Another dying thing freed, another gain harvested, a fourth action of Those Who Remain undone, and his last cure had just erupted seven essences into him at once! And beyond the gains, there was the structure of it. Skallagrim’s independence had come from an altered lineage.
But a steed cured and Marked in the way of Hvitrmarr... he was fairly sure he could make this one into an Apostle that had to absolutely follow his commands!
So he would begin this work here, blades of blood already thinning in the dark, and as his instruments descended toward a second trembling steed, he kept Skallagrim talking, extracting every further thread the Sovereign held, about the brethren, about the Descendants, about the messages of a Father who had never once come down!
Because as he did this... his main body moved.
On a volcanic peak inside THE Infiniverse, Emotive had finally calmed, and Noah crossed thousands of realms, and came out inside his own Realm, on the threshold of his long hall, beside the thing that rested there.
THE Aurate Collar of the First Purity.
It sat where he had set it down, pale and quiet, the chest bones of a First Lifeform that all of existence mistook for a Remnant Existential Treasure. It had not stirred...until now.
And the moment his main body arrived beside it, carrying ten full Provenance Essences within...
The collar PULSED!
A slow throb of light through ancient bone, as if some condition had finally, finally been met... as if he had at last become something that was permitted to peer through its weavings!
...!