Chapter 5619: THE ETERNAL PAX! III
Chapter 5619: THE ETERNAL PAX! III
And at this moment, curiously enough, he was tweaking with an opened Loomwrought Shroud. The artificial lifeform lay spread on his table with its white wrappings parted and its inner weavings exposed, threads of refined Loom glowing softly around a dim core, and his long fingers worked inside it with total delicacy. When Yrsa and Noah arrived, he set his instruments down, turned around, and wiped his hands on a cloth.
Then he looked at Noah with shining eyes!
Noah looked back, and his own eyes flashed.
|Descendant Mahishasura|:: VERITAS: ????? PROVENANCE: ????? POTENTIA: ????? PONDUS: ????? A Descendant of ?????. His purpose here is ?????. ?????
Rows of veiled unknowns, where nearly every other being had opened to him. Apart from the name, and the fact of what he was, very little was visible at all. Compared even to Yrsa, whose panel had at least given him her numbers, this being was a closed book with a title on its spine!
His existence began to silently work to unmask more details of this being as just because they were question marks now did not mean they would be question marks in a few minutes as his Foundations and Appendages went to work!
"A Lifeform that cured one of my Cursed Brethren." The voice came out soft, each word set down with care. "You have outdone yourself, to bring such a creature to my door, Yrsa."
The amber gold eyes did not leave Noah.
"In the weavings of the Descendants, a little rumor had risen, here and there. Something unique occurring among our Brethren on the far side of existence. I confess I dismissed it as the weavings of our people embellish themselves, as they do." A faint smilearose.
"I never expected to have the one responsible standing in my workshop."
He looked Noah up and down slowly, and Yrsa nodded.
"I wanted affirmation on what to do with him, since he is so unique. He was even involved with THE Sealed One. There are multiple unique threads of existence around him, and I..."
As she spoke, she smacked Noah forward a step.
Descendant Mahishasura frowned.
"None of that." The soft voice went stern, and the sternness filled the cluttered hall. "Treat him with a level of respect, my dear Yrsa."
The admonishment visibly surprised her. Warden Yrsa, who had broken a finger and burst a steed’s skull with the same expression, blinked once, nodded, and stepped back. Noah looked at her coldly from behind his chains, and in his mind, nothing about her standing had improved. Her death had been decided long ago. The only open question was the order of it!
He turned the same cold gaze on the Descendant, tyranny sitting open in his crimson gold eyes, and when this fucker saw that gaze, he actually smiled, and walked closer through his own clutter.
"I know, I know." He spread his elegant hands. "It looks like we are the bad guys here, putting lifeforms in cages. I see how all of this looks. Truly, I do."
He stopped a few paces away, entirely at ease before a leashed emperor.
"But nothing good comes easy. Many kings only ever achieved peace by killing millions first. You yourself, across your own life, have likely killed a great many to arrive at your peace... before we interrupted it. Yes?"
He did not wait for an answer.
"We are only containing lifeforms, at present. We had the option of genocide on the table, and we looked at it, and we said no. We are better than all the others. Let us simply collect them all."
He turned, pacing slowly along his tables, one hand trailing across a heap of half-made collars.
"Two Ages ago, there was a Primeval One that grazed the borderlands of THE Infinite Carcosa. Old past records, and patient past measure. Every third of an Age, it would drink a Dimension. Every civilization inside, every Observable Existence, every small bright thing that had spent years becoming itself, swallowed in an afternoon, because a being with an appetite past all measure and the accountability of nothing happened to be hungry."
He glanced back at Noah.
"It sits in a cage now, four columns east of this mountain. It has drunk nothing for a long while. Run the count yourself, Cure-Giver. How many countless decillions are alive at this moment, in Dimensions that still exist, because one appetite was subtracted? Weigh every despondent face you saw on the way here against that number, and tell me honestly which way the scale falls."
Noah said nothing, and the Descendant seemed to enjoy the nothing, and continued.
"Or take a fresher example. THE Sealed One." The amber eyes glinted. "We know him well. We hold multiple of his vessels in inhibition at this very moment. Bodies he spent Ages hollowing and seeding across existence, each one a plot with a pulse, each one meant to burn something down on a schedule only he can read. Every vessel we chained is a Dimension that does not burn. A court that is not hollowed. A war that never finds its excuse. He has noticed the silences, I am sure, and it unsettles him, and I consider that unsettlement a public service."
A soft laugh echoed, and then the warmth deepened!
"The mighty of existence produce catastrophe the way harvests produce grain. Reliably. Seasonally. At scale. And existence has never once had a structure whose task it was to stop them. Not the Scales, which only rank them. Not the frameworks, which only feed them. Us. We are the first accountable thing existence has ever built, and our early reports from the resettlement Observable Existences say the first generations born there, with no authority anywhere among them, are the most peaceful populations in any record we hold."
He set a golden band down on the table. "Cages are ugly. I know. But they are the ugliness of a hospital, not the ugliness of a slaughterhouse, and everyone in existence has been living in the slaughterhouse so long they have forgotten there was ever another building."
HUUM!
Mahishasura came to a stop before him again, and folded his hands behind his back, and his composed face held something genuinely curious.
"Well. That is one thing. The other is how to put you to use." A slight pause. "You see, I keep watch over some Cursed Descendants here. Brethren who earned the ire of Those Who Remain, and well... became Cursed for it. I have made promises to each of them, and now the being who can keep those promises has walked leashed into my workshop."
The soft voice did not change at all as he said it. "Each of them will have their chance with you. And if you play ball... if you play along... even your freedom is not out of the question."
The amber gold eyes shone.
"I am not trying to be some ridiculously evil guy here. I am very reasonable. Existence is give and take, and you currently find yourself in a predicament, and depending on how much you give..."
A slight, elegant bow of his head.
"...there may be a lot to take, Cure-Giver."