Chapter 5869: Movement
Chapter 5869: Movement
<Existential Interlude- THE Gu That Gathered Everything>
Long ago, before the path above was broken, there lived a small Gu called Lodestone.
Lodestone was grey and round and plain, and it had one gift. Whatever it called, came to it.
At first it called small things. A drop of dew, a fallen leaf, a stray thought drifting on the wind. They came, and Lodestone held them, and learned what they were, and was happy.
But a Gu that learns becomes a Gu that wants to learn more. So Lodestone called larger things. It called rivers, and the rivers bent their courses and ran to it. It called stars, and the stars drifted down out of their skies. And when it called the secrets of other Gu, the secrets came creeping out of their hiding places and curled up at its feet.
Lodestone grew vast with knowing. And still, it wanted more.
So it went to the one who knew the most.
THE First Gu of Wisdom lived at the top of a mountain made of answered questions. It was pale and slow and very old, and its wings were covered in eyes, and every eye was closed except one.
"First Gu of Wisdom," said Lodestone, "I can call anything in existence to me, and it comes. Why is that?"
THE First Gu of Wisdom opened a second eye.
"Because you were made to gather," it said. "That is your nature."
"Then is it good," asked Lodestone, "to gather everything?"
THE First Gu of Wisdom opened a third eye, and looked at Lodestone for a long time.
"When you call everything in existence to you," it said, "the good will come. The rivers, the stars, the secrets. And so will the bad. The bad comes just as willingly as the good, and it comes hungrier. Most of the bad will only cost you something. But some of the bad, Lodestone, is deadly. Some of it you cannot send away once it arrives."
Lodestone thought about this.
"Then how do I call only the good?"
"You cannot," said THE First Gu of Wisdom. "A door that opens for everything opens for everything. If you would gather, gather carefully. Call what you know the name of. Leave the rest in the dark, where it belongs."
Lodestone thanked the First Gu of Wisdom, and went home.
And it thought: but I already know the names of everything I can see. The only things left to learn lie beyond my sight. The things beyond.
So Lodestone did the one thing it had been told to leave alone!
It turned its gift outward, past the rivers and the stars, past the secrets of the Gu, past the edge of everything it knew, out into the dark beyond existence. And it called.
It called for a long time.
And something answered!
It came without a sound. It had no name, because nothing that had ever met it had lived long enough to give it one. Drawn along Lodestone’s call like a fish along a line, it rose out of the dark beyond existence, and it was very large, and it was very hungry.
Lodestone saw it coming, and tried to stop calling.
But a gift that has been calling for a long time stops slowly. And the thing in the dark was already close enough to hear.
It ate the rivers Lodestone had gathered, and the stars, and the secrets, one after another, as a child eats sweets. Then it ate Lodestone, slowly, from the outside in, while Lodestone was still calling, still pulling, still begging everything in existence to come and save it.
And everything in existence came. Because Lodestone called it.
And the thing in the dark ate that too!
Long after, when the dark had gone quiet, THE First Gu of Wisdom came down from its mountain of answered questions and found what was left.
A small grey shell, round and plain, hollowed out completely, lying at the bottom of an enormous empty crater where an entire region of existence used to be. Around it lay the bones of everything that had answered its last call.
THE First Gu of Wisdom looked at the shell for a long time.
Then it shook its head slowly, and opened its last closed eye, and spoke its final words on the matter.
"Those who call to everything," it said, "should first learn the names of everything they are calling."
It closed all of its eyes, and climbed back up its mountain, and from that day on, met every question about gathering with silence.
—
<THE Keepers of Existence>
At the far edge of a region of existence that a young Epitropos had only just begun to feel, there lay a Legacy that wished to stay hidden.
Its borders were sealed so tightly that light slid off them. Dimensions passing near it bent away without knowing why. Lifeforms who wandered too close forgot, a moment later, which direction they had been walking. And around it, as around every Legacy in existence now, the Long Night’s snow fell heavy and endless.
But the snow fell only around it!
Inside, it was spring!
THE Legacy of THE Keepers of Existence held countless Dimensions, and in one of them, a Dimensional Landscape stretched away beneath a soft pale sky, and plum trees grew there in rows.
Millions of rows. Every tree the same height, every branch the same reach, every row running straight and perfect toward a horizon that kept receding. And every tree was in full bloom, heavy with blossoms of pink and white and deep wine-red, so thick that the branches bowed under them. The air was warm and still and sweet. Petals drifted down from the branches in slow, soft spirls and settled on the grass below, so thick that the ground between the rows was carpeted with them.
The blossoms stayed fresh, the petals bright, the trees exactly as they were.
As far back as anyone alive remembered, they always had.
And above the rows, among the drifting petals, the Immense Ones floated.
THE SLEEPLESS FIEND hung among them, a hazy titan of restless white-hot threads, his luminous eyes half-lidded, his threads twitching and buzzing as they always did, as if his existence had forgotten how to rest.
Near him drifted THE Verdant Regard, wrapped in green light that made the blossoms around her bloom brighter. She held a single plum branch in one hand and turned it slowly, studying it, her expression cool and distant.
THE Mother of Closed Doors floated a little apart from the others, tall and silent, her form a column of dark wood and iron hinges, every surface of her covered in doors. All of them shut.
THE Gaoler of Unfinished Ages hung close beside her, his body a cage of grey light, and inside the cage, things moved that were forbidden to finish happening.
And THE Unweighed drifted at the back, and of all of them, it was the hardest to look at. It had no fixed shape. Every time the eye settled on it, it seemed to be a slightly different size, as if existence were still deciding how much it weighed.
Other Ancient Immense Ones floated among the rows as well, dozens of them, vast and silent, their auras washing gently over the endless blossoms.
And at the center of them all, his horns rising endlessly into the soft pale sky, hung the one in purple.
|THE Sovereign of the Endless Spiral.|
His haze rolled slowly over the treetops, and wherever it passed, the blossoms trembled. His horns twisted upward and outward without ever reaching an end, spiraling on past where sight could follow, coiling into the sky until they became too faint to see and kept going anyway.
When he spoke, every Immense One in the grove turned to listen.
|"It has just been confirmed."|
His voice was calm, and very heavy.
|"THE First Gu of Destiny may hold knowledge of where a thread of THE Dissolved Progenitor lies."|
A stillness went through the grove!
Petals stopped drifting for a moment, hanging in the warm air.
THE Dissolved Progenitor. The first hand. The first being ever to hold IT, who had stood at the edge of absolute authorship and torn out its own trueness and origin, and ended itself in the very moment it had won!
They had been searching for what it left behind since before the Sundering.
|"Let us see whether she gives the knowledge lightly,"| THE Sovereign of the Endless Spiral went on, |"or with a cost. All of us here have been designated...commanded to go. We do not expect a fight. But if it comes to one..."|
His horns coiled.
|"...it will be costly. None of THE First Gu are easy pickings."|
...!
THE Verdant Regard lifted her eyes from her plum branch.
|THE Verdant Regard speaks.|
|"THE First Gu of Destiny has not left her Ossuary in more Ages than I can count. She keeps her dead threads and talks to no one. Why would she know anything now?"|
|"Because something has been pulling at the cloth,"| THE Sovereign of the Endless Spiral said. |"And Destiny always feels the pull first."|
THE Gaoler of Unfinished Ages shifted, and inside his cage of grey light, the frozen sunrise flickered.
|THE Gaoler of Unfinished Ages speaks.|
|"If it is a thread of the Progenitor, and if it is the trueness rather than the origin..."|
He paused, and the things in his cage stirred.
There were many possibilities that could bloom from it!
The Mother of Closed Doors said nothing at all.
THE Unweighed only seemed, for a moment, to grow very slightly heavier.
Then THE SLEEPLESS FIEND laughed!
It was a low, buzzing sound, his white-hot threads twitching all at once, and every eye in the grove turned toward him.
|THE SLEEPLESS FIEND is amused.|
His luminous eyes opened fully, and swept across all of them.
|"Why go begging a Gu for scraps of knowledge,"| he said, |"when we could plan an entire Narrative to target Destiny itself? Write it down. Unravel it. Collapse it, and take every thread it was ever hoarding."|
...!
The grove went silent!
Petals drifted down between the floating Immense Ones, slow and soft, and settled on the carpet below. Nobody spoke. THE Verdant Regard’s green light dimmed slightly. The Gaoler’s cage went very still. Even the doors on the Mother of Closed Doors seemed to press themselves more tightly shut.
THE Sovereign of the Endless Spiral looked at the Fiend for a long moment.
|"A light hand is better,"| he said evenly. |"It keeps us from making too many enemies at once, and we have enough of those already."|
His haze rolled across the treetops.
|"We go for information first. If it comes to a fight..."|
The faintest edge entered his voice.
|"...well. We can plan for that too."|
He turned his endless horns toward the far edge of the grove, toward something none of the others could see.
|"Let us go."|
HUUM!
Brilliant waves of Immensity rose up around them.
They came off every Immense One in the grove at once, green and white-hot and grey and iron-dark and purple, rising in vast slow tides that shook every tree in every row as far as the eye could see. Blossoms tore loose from the branches in their millions and swirled upward through the light in great spiraling clouds of pink and white and wine-red.
And then they were gone!
Every one of them, in a single breath, leaving behind only a vast, slowly settling cloud of plum blossoms, drifting down through the warm, still air onto the endless rows.
The trees stood quiet again. The blossoms hung heavy on their branches, unchanging.
And in all that vast landscape, from one end of the rows to the other, there was no snow at all.
Only petals, everywhere.
As if, long ago, someone had told the snow not to fall here. And the snow had listened.