Chapter 5915: Dominion II
Chapter 5915: Dominion II
<Existential Interlude- THE Carver of Faces>
Every lifeform wears many faces.
There is the face it shows its children at night, soft and patient. There is the face it shows a friend in grief, quiet and steady. And there is the face it shows the thing that comes to burn its house down, the one it hopes its children will be spared from seeing.
Every one of these faces is true for its moment. The hard part of living is learning which moment you are standing in.
Long ago, in a valley between two warring Dimensions, there lived a carver of faces. She made masks for the lords of the valley, and her masks were famous, because whoever wore one became, for as long as it sat on his skin, exactly what it showed.
A young Immense One came to her and asked for the kindest face she could make. "My people are tired of war," he said. "I want to be gentle with everyone."
She carved him a face of warm wood, smiling, with patient eyes. He wore it every day. He forgave thieves. He fed beggars. When the soldiers of the next Dimension came to his gates, he went out to meet them smiling, opened his arms, and asked them what they needed.
They burned his Dimension in a single night. He died still smiling.
His son came to the carver next. "Make me the hardest face you can," he said. "I will never be weak like my father."
She carved him a face of black iron, with a wolf’s mouth and eyes like nails. He wore it every day. He drove the invaders out of the valley with the power he gained and hunted them back across their own border until their rivers ran thick.
He hanged deserters. He hanged the hungry. When his own daughter cried at night, he heard her through the hardened face, and the hardened face answered her in a voice she remembered all her life.
He died old and unbeaten, and only the crows came to his burial.
His granddaughter came to the carver last.
"Which face should I wear?" she asked.
The old carver looked at her for a long time. Then she gave her both masks, the warm wood and the black iron, and a small knife to cut the straps.
"Wear them both," she said. "Take them off often. And learn, before anything else, which one the moment in front of you needs."
The granddaughter ruled for three hundred years. Her people loved her. Her enemies spoke her name in whispers. When the next Dimension came to her gates, she met their envoys in the warm wood and listened to every word. When they had finished, she put on the iron, walked out, and did what had to be done. Then she came home, and took the iron off before she opened her children’s door.
When she died, her people carved two statues at the mouth of the valley. One smiled. One snarled. Travelers argued for Ages over which one was really her.
Both were.
A face is a tool for a moment. Having many is no danger. Forgetting which one the moment needs is....very, very dangerous.
---
Snow fell on the Elsedimension mountain where Noah stood.
It was a quiet peak, white and steep and empty, and from it he could see almost everything. Above him, in the torn sky, Moriarty floated with more than a hundred Immense Ones of THE Legacy of THE Acharya of Immensity gathered behind him, robes stirring, faces pale. Beings who had lived for Ages. Beings who had built halls and bent Dimensions and raised Lineages.
And none of them could do a single thing.
The power of the foreign Immensities spread out across the Legacy.
Noah smiled grimly.
It was a strange thing, he thought. In one corner of existence, these same beings were legends. Lesser lifeforms whispered their names, built shrines to them, raised children on stories about them. Somewhere, right now, a small lifeform was looking up at the sky and wondering about Immense Ones and their narratives.
And here, in their own home, they were an occupied people.
Power was like that. It was only ever large or small next to something else. The same Immense One could be worshipped in one breath and crushed in the next, and the only thing that changed between the two was who else was standing in the room!
Below and around him, the followers of THE Iron Psalm of the Last Gate went about their work.
They settled the Totems one by one. The Ancients guided the great white pillars down into the land and the sky, the Established Ones walked the perimeter of each, and the Newly Risen and Root Bearers carved long lines of verse into the ground around every base, sealing them in. They worked carefully. Their faces were tight and watchful, their eyes moving constantly over the Legacy’s people, their halberds always close at hand. They knew where they were. They knew what an old Legacy might still be hiding beneath its floors.
Then the last Totem anchored.
A low hum ran through the whole Legacy, felt more than heard, like a great bell struck very far underground. And the faces of the Iron Psalm changed.
The tightness left them. Their shoulders came down. Their gazes softened, calm and almost peaceful, and the Ancients and the Established Ones and the Newly Risen and the Root Bearers, all of them, lifted their heads toward the nine Unfathomables standing at the corners of the Legacy, and looked at them as children look at a parent who has just told them everything will be all right.
Noah watched that look for a long time.
It was devotion, real devotion. Some of these soldiers had been forced under the iron gate, and some had chosen it, and right now the two looked exactly alike.
He looked up at the nine.
An Ancient he could perhaps fight, with every Dream and every truth he had, and a great deal of luck. But an Unfathomable? Nine of them? That was still too high. He could see the gap between himself and them as clearly as he could see the snow falling past his face.
And yet he did not count anything out.
Every one of them, from the nine at the top down to the smallest Root Bearer, fought with Immensity. Their power, their armor, their halberds, their Totems, all of it was built around Immensity, measured in Immensity, aimed at Immensity.
He did not have Immensity.
Even now, the power of the Totems was rolling out across the Legacy, clamping down on every Immense One it touched, and when it reached the snowy peak where he stood, it passed straight through him like light through glass.
|A Totem of Dominion has reached you.|
|No Immensity detected.|
|Restriction applied: none.|
...!
He was still looking at that prompt when Moriarty’s voice touched his mind.
’Lay low for now, Legacy’s Son.’
The voice was quiet and steady and very tired. ’Let us deal with this. Everything can be temporary. Even if it becomes permanent, we can still find a way. But let us deal with it.’
...!
Noah said nothing.
He stood calmly in the falling snow and kept looking up.
Because he could feel it happening. Through his Dream and his Long Night authority and his own bond to this place, he could feel the control of the Legacy slipping, slowly, like sand pulling out from under bare feet at the edge of the sea. Every Totem was a hand on it. Every hand was pulling the other way.
Then the Totems sang.
Their heavy light pulsed all at once, every pillar across the Legacy flaring white in the same instant, and the light rose up from them in long pale threads that met high above the Legacy and wove together.
A new sky bloomed.
It spread out over the Legacy from edge to edge, iron-grey and faintly shining, and across the whole of it ran the markings of THE Iron Psalm: great shut gates drawn in white light, one after another, each with its single line of verse running across the bars, so many of them and so large that the Legacy’s old sky simply vanished behind them. Wherever anyone looked up, they saw a gate. And every gate was closed.
Brunhild Varr floated beneath it, looking down at Moriarty and the others.
"We are all very old," she said, and her voice was almost gentle. "All of us have struggled against existence to reach where we stand. We have no wish to take away any of the hardships you have gone through, or any of the power you earned through them. Right now, you may feel your strength held to about a quarter of what it was. But even that is temporary."
She spread her gauntleted hands. "You can have all of it back, just by joining us fully. We admire Lucy. We admire anyone who refused to simply be one of Those Who Remain."
...!