Chapter 5610: Which One Am I?
Chapter 5610: Which One Am I?
<THE Sealed One>
Far from THE Source Lands.
Deep in THE Infinite Carcosa, in the drifting Dimension called THE Hollow Argosy, an army stood waiting.
Millions of them!
Rank upon rank of Infinite True Lifeforms filled the middle distance, their silent seas running silver through their frames, escalation stacked upon escalation until the air of the Dimension rang with compounding weight.
Beside them and above them stood the Gilded Ones in their brilliance, amplified Egos burning gold and white across the ranks, an ocean of exposed glory that lit the underside of the Dimension’s broken sky.
Millions of the mighty, holding formation in silence, waiting on one man at the forefront.
And at the forefront stood a vessel of THE Sealed One.
This one wore a tall frame in dark imperial layers, hands clasped behind its back, and it looked out over the assembled millions with the easy pleasure of an owner walking his own fields.
Beside him stood a Primeval Lifeform.
The old thing was pale as cooled glass, tall and thin and hairless, its flesh carrying the faint grain of stone that had been polished across ages by nothing but time. Its eyes did not blink and did not warm. It had watched the gathering of this army the way it watched everything, from a great distance that had nothing to do with the space between them, and every line of it made plain that it found the being beside it distasteful.
And it obeyed anyway.
"What are your plans?" the Primeval said.
The vessel smiled. "The plan is rulership. All of these forces, spread across the Carcosa, taking region after region under one accounting. Not slaughter. Subjugation. A thing that has been subjugated still works."
"Rulership for its own sake."
"No. Never for its own sake." The vessel turned his head. "What I am seeking cannot be grasped by any being that only wields power. It can only be grasped by one who holds rulership over a large portion of Existence, and who carries a tremendously high Dimensionality. And those two things go hand in hand most of the time. Rule enough of existence and your Dimensionality rises to meet what you rule. Raise your Dimensionality and you begin to perceive what is worth ruling."
He gestured out over the silver and gold ranks. "So I gather. And with every region that answers to me, I climb, and the thing I am reaching for comes a little further into view."
He clasped his hands. "Now. Your assignments..."
The Primeval waited.
"THE Pale Meridian first. The old spine of roads through the Carcosa, where every crossing eventually touches. Take it under my name."
"Then THE Nine Silent Markets. True Lifeforms have bartered there since before many had names..."
The vessel continued smoothly to list names of various places within THE Infinite Carcosa!
"After the Markets, THE Ossuary Terraces. Stacked bones of dead Observable Existences, gigaparsecs of them, and every scavenger in the Carcosa keeps a house on those terraces. Clear them, and hold them, subjugate all of them."
"..."
The Primeval regarded him with its unblinking, unwarming stare as if he wanted to ask...was that fucking all? Because that was a lot!
But in the end...
"As you command"
"Mm. As I command." The vessel’s smile widened, and he changed subjects entirely with the ease of a man turning a page. "Do you know what I like about this particular body I am wearing?"
The Primeval said nothing.
"This one is unique among all my vessels. It is the only one I did not take." The vessel raised his own hand and studied it, turning it in the light of a million Gilded auras.
"This one came for ME. It was ambitious enough, and frankly stupid enough, to attempt to assimilate something as True as I am, carrying a Dimensionality it could not have measured on its best day. That should have ended the way such things always end. Something small opens its mouth around something enormous and discovers what enormous means."
He flexed the borrowed fingers.
"And yet, somehow... he actually succeeded."
...!
"Not completely and definitely not cleanly. But he got his teeth into the thing he bit, and it held, and what stood up afterward was not him and was not entirely me either." The vessel sounded genuinely delighted.
"This portion of myself is half me, and half this vessel. Neither party filed a complaint, because by the time either of us could have, there was no longer a clean seam to complain across." He looked out over the waiting army with something almost like affection.
"Existence is so unique. All the Mutants. All the Anomalies. You spend eons believing you have catalogued every way a thing can go wrong, and then some ambitious creature swallows a piece of you and comes out the other side as a co-author."
"Ah, I just find it interesting, and I do not find much interesting anymore." The vessel waved a hand at the ranks. "Go. THE Pale Meridian in a few days."
The Primeval turned without a word, and the silver and gold sea parted around it as it walked into the army, and the ranks began to move behind it, millions of the mighty flowing out of THE Hollow Argosy toward the roads of the Carcosa.
And the vessel of THE Sealed One stood alone at the forefront, and hummed.
It was a small hum, and an old one, and it did not belong to THE Sealed One at all. It belonged to whoever this body had been, and the vessel let it come out anyway, and then it stopped humming and smiled at nothing.
"Adrastia," he said. "Emperor King. Sealed One."
He tilted his head.
"Which one am I, in this vessel?"
The ranks flowed past. The broken sky held its light.
"Due to the fact that I cannot even imagine harming little Rose, or a single one of those inside your Inner Dimension..." He laughed softly, and the laugh had two textures in it, one patient and ancient, and one that was simply a young man’s. "Am I you? Or are you me?"
"Hmm!"