Chapter 5611: Chain Them! I
Chapter 5611: Chain Them! I
<Axon>
Gigaparsecs from THE Ymnaros, inside a pocket of dimension that had been folded out of the dark and would be folded back into it within the hour, two collared servants of an unnamed order made their report.
The pocket held nothing! No stone, no floor, no light of its own. Only white rivers of THE Argent Loom threading slowly through the fold, and standing among them, an illusory figure of Warden Yrsa, plain garments, dark hair bound back, pale eyes, and no authority radiating off her even in projection.
Axon stood before her as his halos of white light turned slowly, shoulder to heel. Ohmran stood behind him, vast and clay-skinned and silent, the pale gray band catching the loomlight at his throat.
"Report."
"THE Ymnaros has completed its Dimensionlapse," Axon said. "Another Dimension folded into it fully. We observed for a few hours after the fold settled."
"And?"
"Well, it has been taken over, Warden." Axon’s gaze stayed level. "The whole fused Dimension answers to a single figure. They call him the Blood-Crowned One."
"The dominant lifeforms of the largest domain are unique ones. The Superpowered Lifeforms..." Axon’s halos brightened faintly as he came to it. "They hold no traditional authority. No Intent. No Source. No Infinity. Nothing our instruments read as authority at all. Their power appears to derive from their own physical existences as they exert weight and they endure weight and they do it with nothing under them but themselves."
"Really now? Okay." Yrsa turned back. "What about the figures around this Blood-Crowned One?"
"We listened to the most powerful of them speak among themselves, which is where the useful informstion was." Axon inclined his head.
"There is a dragon. White beneath, crimson within, red gold wings. They call her Hvitrmarr. There is a being with a blindfold of crimson gold hands over a single great eye, Damodred. There is a scholar who emanates absolutely nothing and around whom Intent visibly splits. There are others below them."
Axon’s voice sharpened with the pleasure of a clean finding.
"Every one of the key figures is surrounded by a unique authority. The same authority. It is not their own. It is The Blood-Crowned One’s, wrapped around them, seated in them, and it is unlike anything we have catalogued."
"Hmm." Yrsa’s projection folded its hands. "What else?"
"There is a being standing guard outside the Dimension entirely, in the crossing-dark, and he is not one of theirs by lineage." Axon’s halos slowed. "He should be... a Descendant."
BOOM!
Silence filled the pocket!
"...You are certain?"
"His existence is written as it gives off that same sensation. One unbroken line running backward out of him past the horizon of what I can read. There is no mistaking it, and there is more." Axon lifted his chin. "He has what looks to be... a Mount with him. A Steed."
Ohmran’s slow eyes shifted at that.
"I know many variations of Descendants," Axon continued. "Across the Dimensions we have visited. Lineages that hold thrones. Lineages that hold silence. But those known to travel with Mounts, with Steeds...Are they not the Cursed Descendants of THE Krazhor-Nul Dimension?"
"They... should be..."
Even Yrsa seemed surprised to confirm this!
"Then a Cursed Descendant of THE Krazhor-Nul is standing guard outside THE Ymnaros. And Warden, he is very much not looking cursed! There is no rot on him. Nothing failing anywhere in that existence. His Steed either! Both of them are whole!"
"..."
"And both of them emanate the aura of the Blood-Crowned One."
HUUM!
"We watched manifestations of that same figure hold the sky over the largest domain for a little while observing the Dimensionlapse," Axon said, "and then vanish some hours ago. Whatever moved them, moved them together. And this Descendant and his Steed carry that same crimson gold signature threaded through their existences." His halos turned.
"This should be the being THE Sealed One had trouble with. The Remnant Existential Treasure should be on him or near him, and everything the vessel told you about a young lifeform growing into power was true and also badly incomplete."
"Because a young lifeform growing into power does not have a Cursed Descendant standing in his doorway!"
Axon’s composure finally showed a crack, and what came through it was... appetite!
"What cured that Descendant? How? Under what authority? By whose permission? And if it was done without permission..."
He stopped there, because there was nowhere polite to take it.
Yrsa’s projection said nothing for a long moment.
Then she spoke, and her voice was exactly as calm as it had been when she broke a hand.
"This Dimension is now of the highest importance."
Axon straightened as her pale eyes moved between them.
"Descendants have been off limits. We had been waiting on instructions, and the instructions have not come."
"But Warden..."
"I am clearing it as of now."
...!
"We move on THE Ymnaros. I will seek clearance, but I now have enough basis." Yrsa did not pause. "We will use the Inhibitors in one sweeping action: the Descendant first, and every important and most powerful figure in that Dimension simultaneously. The dragon, the blindfolded one, the scholar who emanates nothing, all of them, in the same breath. Nothing sequential. Sequential gives the mighty time."
"And the Superpowered Lifeforms?"
"A lifeform to study." Something almost like interest touched her voice. "We do not know whether our Inhibitors work on them. That question needs answering. Collar what you can reach among them and record everything."
"Understood."
"I will arrive myself. I will lead this incursion, and I will bring others." Her projection’s hands unfolded. "I will handle the shackling of the Descendant personally. The rest of you move in one sweep on the others. And to ensure success..."
She said it grandly!
"I will requisition a Dimensional Inhibitor."
...!
A Dimensional Inhibitor!
Axon’s halos flared bright before he could govern them, and even Ohmran’s slow head turned!
Because that was one of their foremost weapons! A device that made authority obsolete across a region of an entire Dimension, everything within it stripped and inert at once, no exceptions, no negotiation, no ladder that held! Barely less than a second of effect, and then nothing for a long while after!
But in that second, everything mighty inside the region was simply a body!
They had taken down Primeval Ones this way. They had taken down True Lifeforms, in a single second, in one sweep, before any of them understood the shape of what had happened to them!
The last of her flickered in the loomlight.
"Hold your positions and observe. Touch nothing."
"..."
"I will arrive soon," Warden Yrsa said. "Then we will actually get started."