Chapter 5145: Go Wild! II
Chapter 5145: Go Wild! II
Even sitting on a makeshift throne of Infinity with his head leaned back, he looked fucking majestic.
Emotive had been staring at her Fixation for the last few minutes while he closed his eyes, and she had not spared even a single nanosecond of her attention to the Primordial Architect beside them. Naldine. The woman who kept looking at her coldly with those ridiculous singularity-dotted eyes. Whatever. Whatever. Naldine could look at her all she wanted. Naldine could stare until her golden-streaked hair turned white!
Emotive was busy. Emotive had better things to be doing with her precious seconds than returning that cold gaze.
She had been spending all her precious seconds looking at him.
She was not sitting still while she looked, of course.
He had told her very plainly that she was only a tool. He had told her in the clearest possible way, and she understood how easily tools could be discarded when they no longer had uses. She had discarded tools of her own across her eons. She had discarded beings, emotions, entire phases of her existence, the moment they stopped serving whatever she had needed them for. She knew how it worked from both sides of the exchange. So she was not sitting still. She was working. She was always working now.
When it came to her own power, like any other being, she had always known she could be powerful. She had always known she had a lot of potential. Every being believed that about themselves. Every being carried some version of the conviction that their latent capacity exceeded their current expression. Most beings were wrong about it. Most beings were overestimating.
But she wasn’t.
She wasn’t, she wasn’t, she wasn’t! Getting the confirmation and affirmation that the aspect she was most in tune with, that her very identity was based around, was the exact aspect the most powerful beings actively amplified in themselves. Anh! It made her conviction grander. It made her confidence grander. It made everything in her grander. She grew bolder. She grew crazier!
Crazier in the good way, the useful way, the way that gave her hands to work with rather than just feelings to drown in.
And she had been working.
She had already tapped into all the amplified Egos of every single Primordial Architect in THE Wyld.
Every single one.
Even this woman next to her who kept looking at her coldly. Naldine Manthon, yes, that Naldine, saturated with her Fixation’s brilliance.
Emotive could feel Naldine’s emotions perfectly clearly right now, and she had been quietly tapping into their power this whole time. Naldine had no idea. Naldine, with all her imperious composure and her ancient vihuela and her transformation, did not know she was being siphoned from while she stood there frowning at the manic little woman on the nearby wave! And she was not losing any power as what Emotive was siphoning was not her power...but the intensity of her emotion!
Such a thing should have been impossible. But emotions, while amplified, were one of the hardest things to understand or defend against. Most beings didn’t even perceive them as a vector of attack. Most beings thought emotions were background noise.
For her, emotions were architecture. Emotions were engineering. Emotions were the rivers, and the intensity of these rivers fed her. So long as someone felt, and they felt intensly, she could feed!
She had formed nearly all of her Proterozoic Bones and Organs through this quiet siphoning across the last minutes. Common Calymmian Proterozoic Scale beings were manageable for her now.
But she knew it wasn’t enough.
Not yet. Not yet. Not yet!
Her methodology was simple, and the simplicity was what made it so terrifying. She tapped into any advancement made within particularly emotional existences. Any leap in cultivation. Any breakthrough. Any refinement of an Ego that had just been amplified to new thresholds. Whenever a being’s emotions surged intensly during a moment of power-growth, their emotional weavings flared into her perception like a beacon, and she reached through those weavings and siphoned a current of intensity.
The most useful targets were beings with amplified Egos, because their emotional weavings were thicker, denser, more saturated with the kind of signal that carried power alongside feeling. The engineered Primordial Architects of THE Wyld were nearly perfect donors for her methodology. Their Greeds and Prides and Wraths and Lusts roared through the ambient emotional field so loudly that she could drink from them from across gigaparsecs.
The most terrifying thing was how silent it was, because she wasn’t doing anything herself. She wasn’t attacking anyone. She wasn’t reaching out with hostile weavings. She wasn’t declaring intent or announcing her presence in any of the registers that powerful beings monitored. She was only tapping into emotions, and emotions were everywhere, and emotions belonged to nobody and everybody at once, and her presence inside the emotional substrate was indistinguishable from the substrate itself.
She was a fish in water that other fish didn’t notice was hungry.
As she was thinking all of this, her Fixation opened his eyes.
Oh.
Oh, oh, oh!
His eyes had come to a decision. Emotive had seen many indecisive men across her eons, too many, honestly. Her Fixation was not one of them. His eyes held the clean clarity of a being who had weighed options and had already moved past the weighing into execution.
She waited for him to assert his authority first. That was the correct order of operations. A tool did not speak before its wielder. A tool did not even breathe before its wielder unless the breathing served some purpose the wielder had already sanctioned. So she waited, her hair holding steady in a disciplined gold.
He looked at her. Then at Naldine.
"Alright. We’re going to go a little wild."
His voice carried the calm confidence she had come to associate with his best moments.
"We don’t have to worry about Gilded Ones turning their gaze in our direction."
...!
Ah!
Look at the fucking confidence of this guy to say such words as if he knew and understood them with complete surety!
He had been sitting on his throne for a few minutes, consulting whatever battery he consulted, and he had come back up with information that let him declare the upper tier of existence disinterested in their work. She did not know what he knew. She did not need to know what he knew. She trusted that he knew it, because his voice carried the tone of a being who had never once been wrong about the things he declared with that particular cadence.
Naldine, of course, did not respond this way.
Naldine had a pondering look cross her face as she looked at him.
"Are you sure?"
Her voice was measured, almost polite, but the question was still a question.
"How can you be so certain?"
Ho?
Ho, ho, ho!
Was Naldine actually questioning her Fixation? Did she not understand that men loved to be listened to the most? Sheesh, this was basic!
This was the foundation. If her Fixation told her to jump, Emotive would ask how high.
If he told her to kneel, she would ask him in which posture! If he told her to collapse herself, she would ask him how thoroughly, with what method, in which order, and whether he wanted to watch. She was that committed. She was that fervent!
And the commitment was working for her.
Look at her right now. She had gained the capability to tap into the emotions of every single creature within THE Wyld. Every single one. But she could only feel, not tap into, her Fixation’s emotions. His emotional substrate existed, she could perceive it, she could taste the countless colors of it in the ambient field around him, but she could not reach inside it and siphon from it the way she siphoned from everyone else. She made gains from how her emotions responded to his actions, but his weavings were closed to her. His Egos were fenced from her access. That was how unique and distinguished he was!
That was how far above her he sat. And Naldine was going to stand there asking him if he was fucking sure?
All of this only made her fixation on him even stronger.
She controlled her mania. She pulled on emotions of coherence and discipline. She was a tool. She was a useful tool. She was going to be the most useful tool her Fixation had ever held in his hands, and she would prove it right now!
"Sir."
Her voice was as steady as she could make it, with only a small flicker of excitement beneath the surface.
"I have the updated locations of all eighty-one Primordial Architects participating in the Civilizational Holy War. All of them. Whenever you want to see it, I can deliver it."
She let the information settle, then continued.
"Eighteen of them are currently on top of THE Gilded White Mountain."
Her hair cycled into a darker, more conspiratorial gold as she spoke.
"Eighteen of the eighty-one, clustered on a single location, sitting very close together, breathing the same mountain air. Convenient, yes? Dozens more Primordial Architects belonging to a different faction of power, not THE Deliverance, are also on that mountain. The mountain is something like a gathering point for a rival clique. And..."
Her voice dropped slightly.
"THE Creature has arrived at the base of this mountain."
Naldine’s head turned slightly at the name.
"His emotions right now are brutality and bloodthirst. I can taste them from here. They are loud, they are cold, they are utterly focused. Everything on that mountain is about to die within the next hour. Even though there are multiple Ediacaran Proterozoic Scale Primordial Architects with their Egos amplified up there. THE Creature has decided, and when he decides, the mountain is already falling, it just doesn’t know it yet."
Her smile sharpened slightly.
"So that will take care of eighteen of the eighty-one combatants. Without you lifting a finger. That is eighteen you can consider already crossed off your list."
She leaned forward slightly.
"How... do you want to fuck up the rest, sir?"
...!
She said the words with her mania leashed tight, because she wanted to be a very, very useful tool.
The blood of many beings, the blood and the emotions alongside, would fuel her dream. Her dream that now sat a few feet from her on a throne of Infinity, reading her report with shining eyes, weighing her usefulness in real time.
Primordial Architects and even THE Gilded Ones, eventually.
Whoever. Whoever!
If he wanted them to bleed...she would only ask how red the rivers of blood should be, no questions asked!