Chapter 5618: THE ETERNAL PAX! II
Chapter 5618: THE ETERNAL PAX! II
THE ETERNAL PAX.
Of course, a name told you what a thing wished to be, not what it was. Noah turned the ridiculous title over as the cloud carried them on, and behind him Yrsa yawned and stretched, in the manner of a woman who felt she had done quite enough for one cycle.
The distant figures she had been commanding fell away behind them, and then it was only the two of them, crossing the vibrant mountains alone.
Since the crossing was long, Noah was able to see many things.
The first was the strangeness of the shrouded figures. In the areas they passed, many of them moved about continuously, leading rows and hauling chains along the golden roads, and that much was ordinary enough.
But others were not moving at all.
They stood straight and stationary in ordered clusters across the terraces, dozens together, unbreathing and unswaying, and the longer he looked at them, the more a question settled in him. Were these truly lifeforms at all? Or was he looking at an army of things that only wore the shape of one?
His eyes flashed quietly, and details bloomed.
|You are observing THE LOOMWROUGHT SHROUDS.|
|Artificial lifeforms of THE ETERNAL PAX, born from woven authority and unknown technology. Each is grown around a core of refined Argent Loom and wrapped in a body manufactured to a single exacting standard. They do not eat, do not rest, do not age, and do not question any orders. They activate upon assignment and stand down upon completion.|
|A Loomwrought Shroud|:: VERITAS: 11. PROVENANCE: 0. POTENTIA: 11. PONDUS: 11. It has never asked a question.
He swept his gaze across the stationary clusters, panel after panel unfolding, and every one of them read exactly the same. Eleven, eleven, eleven, across every attribute, on every figure, without a single decimal of deviation. Compared to the wild variance he had seen in the caged, where a Primeval measured differently in every limb of its panel, this uniformity said something all its own.
A grown thing varied. A made thing matched. And someone, somewhere, had made a very great number of soldiers who each carried the weight of a weak Primeval Lifeform!
How many of them existed? How long had they been standing?
Ahead of him, Yrsa laughed.
"Why look around so much?" She did not even turn. "It is not like anything you see here will help you. Once jailed, there is not really any going back. Many powerful beings realized this in time. You are in it for the long haul, as your fate will be decided soon enough."
Noah said nothing to that, and continued observing coldly. After all, she believed the leash at his neck was working.
At the sides of his head, his own voices spoke instead.
"We could begin by nuking this entire place," THE Closed Crown said. "The mountains, the roads, the towers. Make sure nothing here leaves alive, and let existence sort out what it lost."
"Destruction can come in time," THE Open Hand answered. "Right now, we understand. We already paid the price of being chained, and the price is spent. So we collect as much as possible against it."
In truth, there was a great deal to collect.
He saw processing terraces cut into the mountainsides, where inhibited lifeforms stood sorted into queues by their varieties, Source with Source and Gilded with Gilded, each line advancing toward seated figures in layered robes. Every collar was touched in turn, and floating ledgers of purple gold script recorded each one’s informstion into some greater count.
Farther out, cage-caravans slid along the string-roads between mountains, boxes in trains a thousand long, bound for reaches he could not see the end of. In the middle distance, silent crews of Shrouds were hollowing out an entire mountain, carving its radiant stone into tier upon tier of empty archive.
Compared to what he had first assumed, an incursion force with a fortress behind it, this was something else entirely. This was a complex organization!
Ultimately, they came to one of the larger mountains, and Yrsa guided the cloud down toward a single purple tower on its upper slopes. The tower was tall, windowless, and smooth, and they passed through its gates on foot, his chains ringing softly in the quiet.
The halls inside were filled with Loomwrought Shrouds. They lined the corridors in stationary rows, filling alcoves and junctions, and some of them had clearly stood in their places for centuries. Not one turned its head as a leashed emperor walked past.
At a wide junction, another figure came out of a side hall. An Enforcer, judging by the layered robes and the purple gold sash, broad and scarred, with a ledger of light folded under one arm. He stopped when he caught sight of them, and looked Noah up and down with open appraisal.
"Warden Yrsa." A nod. "I heard you bagged a unique one?"
"Mind your own business, Enforcer Halvard." said Warden Yrsa, and kept walking.
The Enforcer laughed once behind them before his expression became cold as he moved on. Noah noted the exchange without comment.
The corridor ended at massive purple gold doors, and they ground open before Yrsa’s raised hand.
What lay past them was, of all things, a mess.
The great hall beyond was cluttered from wall to wall. Loomwrought Shrouds filled it, though not in ordered ranks. Some stood active, drifting between tables on silent errands, while others slumped against the walls and across benches as if they simply were not operational, white-wrapped bodies folded over in the manner of set-down tools.
Hundreds of collars and leashes lay strewn about in heaps and coils, gray bands and golden bands, whole and half-made and taken apart, spread across tables and hanging from racks and pooling on the floor between instruments Noah had no names for.
Yrsa entered with shining eyes, looking straight ahead, and Noah understood why quickly enough. At the center of the clutter sat an area where even he was forced to focus, because a boundless immensity rested there without bothering to announce itself!
A figure stood at a long table with his back to them.
He was tall and lean. Pale gold hair fell straight and unbound down his back, and every thread on him was royal: a long coat of deep black, high-collared, worked with fine gold embroidery down its seams, over a white shirt whose laced collar rose elegant at his throat, a dark half-cloak hanging from one shoulder.
Upon his brow, half-veiled by the pale hair, sat a small mark of pure obsidian. Amid all the mess of his own making, he alone was immaculate!
This was Descendant Mahishasura!