Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse

Snow fell over THE Infinite Carcosa, slow and quiet and endless, because THE Long Night still held its effects everywhere, even here, where the snow drifted down onto rivers of infinity and vanished into them without a sound.

Octavius Infinitum hung in the air above one of those rivers with his arms bound behind him in chains of pale falling-star light of Immensity, and the infinity inside his body burned against the chains and could not break them. Beside him were the two other Ancients of his dominion and the ten Established Immense Ones who had followed them, every one of them bound the same way, every one of them bleeding light from wounds that would take an years to close.

They had carved out a dominion of their own in the Carcosa long ago, a small and stubborn stretch of infinite currents that answered to no one, and an hour ago that had ended.

A dozen Ancient Immense Ones and three Half-Unfathomable Immense Lifeforms in white and gold had come down a road of falling stars and announced that the forces of THE Shepherd of Falling Stars had spread out across existence to conquer, and that everyone they met would be brought into his fold.

Octavius and his people had refused, of course, and the Shepherd’s followers had answered by beating them until their Immensities and Narratives were nearly shattered, and then binding them for transport.

Now the captors were preparing to take them away to wherever these fuckers took the people they collected, and Octavius looked at them with all the hatred an Ancient could still hold. The three Half-Unfathomables stood at the front, tall and calm and terrible, and the tallest of them, a man with silver eyes and a long white braid whom the others called Corvin Astrael, was already turning toward the road of stars.

Octavius had lived in the Carcosa for longer than most lifeforms had existed, and he had never once been taken anywhere against his will, and he burned with the shame of it.

HUUM!

A burst of power rolled across the Carcosa from somewhere far away, so heavy and so sudden that every river of infinity in sight shivered and every flake of snow paused for an instant in the air. Octavius felt the infinity in his own body tremble in answer to it, and he saw the chained Established Ones around him go pale. The captors felt it too, and the three Half-Unfathomables looked at one another for a long moment without speakng.

Then Corvin Astrael turned away from the road of stars and toward the place the power had come from, and the whole company moved, captors and captives together. They rode the currents of infinity at great speed, crossing river after river and sweeping through the slow storms of snow, until the Carcosa itself seemed to blur around them. Octavius was dragged along in his chains, and with every river they crossed, the trembling in his infinity grew stronger.

…!

They stopped above a sea that was nearly empty. Octavius knew this part of the Carcosa, or he thought he did, because it had been an endless blue sea for as long as he could remember, and now its bed lay almost bare, with water slowly pouring back in from every horizon to fill it again. In the middle of that emptiness, floating above the shallow water, there was a farm.

It was about a mile long, with black-gold soil that shone faintly, three bright rivers running through it, and a small blue-gold sapling standing in the middle with four thin branches. A tall woman in a linen shirt and a work apron stood near the rivers, and out of her poured a steady, calm wave of Ancient Immensity, green and deep and old. At the far edge of the soil stood a long row of grey Nightmars, hundreds of them, staring at the farm and doing nothing else at all.

And beside the sapling stood a man with a hoe on his shoulder, wearing a plain work shirt, worn trousers, boots, and a wide straw hat.

He gave off no pressure at all, no Immensity, no Narrative, nothing that Octavius could feel, and he was looking up at all of them with an expression of mild surprise. The captors stared down at him, the prisoners stared down at him, and for a moment nobody said anything.

The Half-Unfathomables frowned, looked past the man, treating him as part of the field, and settled their attention on the woman leaking Ancient Immensity.

Corvin Astrael shook his head and floated down toward her, his white and gold robes trailing behind him. “THE Shepherd of Falling Stars is expanding his brilliance across existence,” he told her. “Kings will continue to rise, and existence will be tumultuous, so you have a choice. Will you join him and be protected, or will you resist first, and then join him?”

…!

The woman did not answer, and Corvin did not even glance at the man with the hoe, but Octavius could not take his eyes off him. The infinity in Octavius’s body was quivering, and after a long moment he understood that it was quivering with fear, and that it was afraid of this man in farming clothes who stood in his field with the calm, easy bearing of a King. The man looked up at all of them with a serene gaze and spoke for the first time.

“Cause and effect,” he said thoughtfully. “Did a burst of power lead you all here? I’ve only just started on this whole idea that existence is all connected, but damn, that was fast.”

He glanced at the woman in the apron and sighed. “My scarecrow is a bit weak for you guys, though.”

…!

Octavius blinked, and so did every prisoner around him and half the captors besides, while in his own head, without quite deciding to, he began to think of this man as THE Farmer. Corvin Astrael turned at last and looked at THE Farmer properly, and his lip curled into a sneer at the hat and the hoe and the dirt on the man’s boots. Then he flung out his hand.

The force that left Corvin’s hand was the force of a Half-Unfathomable Immense Lifeform, enough to crack a Dimension in half, and it fell toward the farm with a sound that tore the snow out of the air. THE Farmer breathed in deeply, and as he breathed, the farm under his feet pulsed with light, and the rivers pulsed, and the empty sea around it pulsed, all of it brightening at the same moment. A thin film of light, barely visible, appeared over his skin, and he raised his hoe!

The hoe moved in a long, low curve, bending and sliding sideways through the air until its blade met the edge of the falling force. It did not block the blow, and it did not strike back, but it turned the blow, guiding the whole weight of it up and around and away until it was rushing back toward the sky. The force of a Half-Unfathomable exploded high above the farm in a blaze of white and gold, and not one grain of the black-gold soil below so much as moved.

…!

A heavy silence spread across the sky, broken only by the soft sound of snow beginning to fall again. Corvin Astrael shot back upward, and this time he moved with care, and the other two Half-Unfathomables and the dozen Ancients closed around him in a ring while the sky above them began to crackle with gathered Immensity!

“Who,” Corvin demanded, his silver eyes fixed on the man below, “are you?!”

…!

Octavius and the other prisoners stared down at the farm in silent astonishment, but Octavius was more than astonished, because he had lived in THE Infinite Carcosa since before THE First Sundering, and he knew its flows of infinity better than even Unfathomable Immense Ones did. He could feel those flows now, every current and river and depth of infinity for a very long way in every direction, and every single one of them had turned toward the man with the hoe.

Every shred of infinity in the surrounding Carcosa was supporting this being, holding him up and leaning in toward him, and Octavius had never seen the Carcosa do that for anyone, while all around them the snow began to dance heavily!

4/4 Onward! Next chapter title: A Mighty Hoe I