Chapter 5632: Rage. Rage. Rage!
Chapter 5632: Rage. Rage. Rage!
The wall was torn, and Noah was already thinking past it.
His current level of immensity was a floor, not a ceiling, and the road to raising it rapidly had already proven itself five Dimensions over.
More Hearthshifts. More wells laid beneath more draws. More rulership extended along roads no instrument could register, until the count beneath him stopped being millions and started being measured the way Dimensions were measured!
The plan needed no revision. It only needed repetition, and time, and he held infinite quantities of exactly one of those.
But at such a time... something connected to him trembled!
HUUUM!
It was not an attack. It was not the Weft, and it was not a thread of rulership, and for one strange moment he could not place it at all, because the trembling came from a connection he had given away.
It came from THE Infiniverse.
From the bubble chamber. From the backbone of THE Infinite Scales he had cast out on obsidian sands, the framework he had built across a small time in mimicry of Vakochev’s Scales of Existence, the ladder his old power had climbed before Provenance replaced every rung of it.
He had been thinking, only recently, about how to reframe that cast-out skeleton under his Provenance!
And at this moment, she sent her message through.
|Master. Weavings of a grand record are being sent through your old scales of existence.|
|A record that seems to stem from... Vakochev himself.|
BOOM!
Noah’s eyes shone with a terrifying brilliance.
"Send it through."
He closed his eyes. And within a corner of his consciousness, a grand record was passed inward, and it bloomed!
His consciousness gave the record a stage, and the stage was an endless stellar blue sea.
Noah’s body manifested upon the still water, whole and standing, and opposite him, something else arrived.
A shrouded figure, seated.
It could not entirely be observed. The shape of it slid away from direct perception, and around it, obsidian waves rolled, black lightning crawling through them in slow crowns, immensity manifesting in tides that the blue sea absorbed without complaint!
A being that had covered Observable Existences and Dimensions and vast reaches of THE Infinite Carcosa and THE Source Lands with a single framework, rendered down into a recording, and still too grand to look at directly.
And then it spoke, and its voice boomed through the whole of Noah’s consciousness!
"I am Vakochev."
The obsidian waves rose with the name.
"And I am reaching out to all those who tried to do what I tried to do. I send this message through my Scales and other Scales, to the few with Boundless Potential."
The shrouded head lifted.
"I tried to go against Those Who Remain. I tried to level the playing field, for all of us. And I have failed. I have to retreat. I have come to the conclusion that this is not something I can do alone... because Those Who Remain are not alone."
The lightning stilled for a moment, and the voice came lower.
"I retreat in defeat. And I persevere. And you, who seek to do the same as me... Persevere. They are coming for me, and they will come for you. They will try to stifle every life and every possibility that could one day topple them. So forgive me, for the adversity you are about to have."
The figure’s shrouded gaze seemed to find him, across a recording, across existence.
"But even adversity is part of existence. If you die, this is also a part of existence. If you are brought into their folds, this too is a part of existence. So Persevere. Do not go gentle into the night."
The obsidian waves rose into a storm.
"Rage."
The sea shook.
"Rage."
The sky of his consciousness split with black light.
"RAGE!"
BOOM!
The figure stood, and the standing alone drove the stellar sea outward in a ring, and then it shot upward, a pillar of obsidian and lightning climbing out of the record and out of perception entirely!
And where it had sat, something remained.
A single obsidian crystal, small and dark and perfectly still, settling down through the blue water of Noah’s consciousness.
|The record has concluded.|
|Something has been left behind. Its nature is ?????.|
Noah opened his eyes, shock still moving through him, the crystal settling somewhere deep and the last word still ringing in every corner of what he was!
He grasped the crystal, and all it had were question marks!
And in the next moment, all of existence began to shake.
The Dimension he stood in shook. And far across the dark, even THE Infiniverse began to shake, a Unique Transfinite Dimension trembling in her own step between Dimensions
It...was not isolated.
---
In a quiet Inner Dimension far across THE Infinite Carcosa, a man who wore the body of Achilles Adrastia was breaking a promise slowly, and doing it face to face.
"Until I am certain," he said, "that I control my existence... that this hand is mine when it moves, and this voice is mine when it speaks... I may have to leave you, Rose."
The woman before him had green hair that fell in loose waves, and a beauty so vivid it made the quiet garden around her seem painted was pained.
She was about to reply when...
Existence shook.
The garden swayed. The light bent. And the man who was half Achilles Adrastia and half something sealed and ancient had already appeared to wrap his arms around Rose as he looked around for any threat coldly!
—
Far away.
In an unknown Dimension of black stone and burning skies, THE Creature was at war.
Two Primeval Ones circled him, vast and old and bleeding, and his obsidian flames ran threaded with white-gold as THE MAW hung open at his shoulder and the shapeless Pantheon wore the battlefield itself. One of the Primevals struck!
Then existence shook.
All three ancient things stopped, mid-violence, in perfect unison.
And THE Creature turned his head upward, toward a sky that was not the source of anything, and the swirling white rivers in his eyes narrowed.
"...Hm."
—
In a grand citadel of gold and glory, a thousand True Gilded Lifeforms looked up at once.
Not one after another. At once, in a single synchronized motion, a thousand brilliant heads tilting toward the ceiling in the same heartbeat, because not one of the motions was their own. Their amplified Egos burned in perfect, identical rhythm, an ocean of glory moving as one instrument.
For they were under the collective control of THE Great Usurper.
And around them, existence shook!
—
And in THE Serenaros, the shaking rolled through everything.
The purple gold mountains swayed upon their clouds. The cage-fields rattled for light years, columns of stacked prisons groaning, despondent captives lifting their heads.
And inside a pocket Dimension that was sealed against all of existence, the shaking arrived anyway.
The marble hall trembled. Wine pools shivered. Cured Descendants were on their feet in an instant, staring upward at a pretend sky, and the empty instrument that had been Yrsa stood placidly in the swaying hall awaiting instruction, and Descendant Mahishasura gazed around coldly.
Noah stood at the center of the trembling marble.
He looked around slowly and somberly as he thought about Vakochev’s words!
Rage. Rage. Rage!