Chapter 5518: Existence and Anomalies! II
Chapter 5518: Existence and Anomalies! II
The golden island streaked across the storming dark, and upon it, Anaximander had gone quiet for a long moment.
Noah had just finished telling him more about the fate of their Observable Existence, the door they had all come from...gone. Taken into the hands of THE Sealed One.
The scholar exhaled slow. He shook his head, and then, being Anaximander, curiosity reasserted itself.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I am glad you were able to save many. And I haven’t heard much about THE Sealed One in my travels. But I have heard extensively about two others, and if we are to speak of things worth fearing across Dimensions, these two came up at every campfire, in every society, in every tongue. THE Dimensional Eater. And Vakochev."
Noah’s brows rose.
Anaximander leaned forward. "There exists a slime. A small, harmless-looking slime. It appears within unsuspecting Dimensions without warning, without wake, without any door anyone can find, and it simply...sits there. Wobbling. Doing nothing! And here is the terrible weavings every civilization has learned across the ages. If that slime survives within a Dimension for longer than a few days, that Dimension will likely be marked for death. And then, at some hour no one can predict, the whole of it, the space, the weavings, the lifeforms, the very dimensional laws, will be devoured."
"The entire Dimension! Which is why, and I found this both tragic and extremely funny, slimes are hunted across nearly every established Dimension in existence. All slimes! Innocent ones, ordinary ones, little wobbling nothings that couldn’t devour a meal, exterminated on sight, because no lifeform who knows the story is willing to take the chance that the harmless one in front of them is THE one." He spread his hands.
"An entire species made refugee by a single member’s reputation. The Superpowered folk had standing extermination patrols. I watched a powerful protector burn a puddle of slime the size of a teacup with enough power to crack half an Observable Existence, and when I asked him if that seemed excessive, he looked at me like I was the mad one."
"And Vakochev," Anaximander continued, his voice settling into genuine scholarly respect, "is another matter entirely. From everything I gathered, he is one of the more powerful beings of this Era. Not a myth, not an ancient, a living power, current and active! And his Scales of Existence are not merely a ladder someone wrote down. They are a framework, a living structure covering many Observable Existences and Dimensions, vast areas of THE Infinite Carcosa, great stretches of THE Source Lands. Uncountable lifeforms are born, climb, and die entirely inside his architecture without ever learning a single other way to grow." He raised one finger.
"Even some weaker True Lifeforms, beings who have formed their own Egoic Intent, who have crossed onto their own path and owe the Scales nothing...paradoxically continue to follow the structure of his Scales anyway. His framework remains paramount even after Trueness, for those who want it."
...!
Noah’s eyes narrowed slightly at that!
And then, from the edge of the golden sands, the silent Creature spoke up.
"Existence is vast."
His flat voice settled over the island, and everyone turned.
"We are young by comparison. All of us. Histories have been unfolding long before us, and we are walking across their aftermaths and calling it exploration." His white-gold-threaded flames stirred slowly around his frame.
"Apart from THE Sealed One...those for us to look out for are the Lineages connected to Those Who Remain. The Descendants of Those Who Remain. Those who are part of their Lineages...believe Existence is theirs. Not as ambition. As inheritance."
Noah listened closely, for THE Creature’s path was Existence itself!
"We are in a Dimension that has Cursed Descendants. Broken ones. Dying ones. But there are many more Dimensions of normal Descendants, unbroken lineages, and they all hold unique and terrifying capabilities exceeding any True Lifeform." His flat gaze moved across all of them, unhurried.
"And if I can give any advice...never take power as Absolute. The rankings you know, Infinite, Source, Gilded, True, they are catalogues, not walls. You might meet lifeforms who don’t fit in any of them, and they might have power exceeding all of them."
Then, dryly, without any change in his tone at all...
"I mean, look at Osmont here. I envision him to be one of those anomalous Existences. Alongside you, Anaximander."
...!
Noah and Anaximander both shook their heads at these words immediately.
"I am...just human, nothing more..." Noah said.
"And I am a very normal scholar, an explorer..." Anaximander added, nodding seriously!
"Hm," said THE Creature.
Noah leaned back upon his throne as the conversation washed around him, thinking about everything that had been said.
A slime that ate Dimensions. A framework so grand the free still climbed it! Lineages who believed Existence was inherited property, and unbroken Descendants scattered across Dimensions with capabilities exceeding Trueness itself. Existence truly was vast and filled with far too many things, far too many powers, far too many histories still unfolding beneath every step they took!
But he...would move steadily on his own path.
His own way. His own Tongue, his own Scales! His Second Scale was being enacted even now, its Foundations all standing at Straif and above, and it almost seemed ready for the next stage, some threshold he could feel approaching. And beyond that, his curiosity burned in specific directions! His Causes. His Infinite Cause, seated in himself and THE Infiniverse and grown grander with her every devoured mouthful of this Dimension!
And the Steeds of Those Who Remain, dying carriers of First Causes, one of them rushing toward him at this very moment with hope in its failing weavings.
What gains could potentially be made there? What did a being who could seat Causes owe to creatures whose Causes were dying?
The golden island tore onward toward the hopeful dying thing, and THE True Human Emperor smiled slightly upon his throne! After a stretch of comfortable quiet, Noah began to speak again.
His voice was calm.
"I wonder sometimes how far we should go on those we consider our enemies." His gaze rested on the raging horizon. "THE Gilded Ones. Much of those who affected our Lower Observable Existence are either dead, or taken by THE Sealed One. So what remains of that grudge? Will we seek and kill all Gilded Ones, since we don’t like their nature? Those who are True? The Primeval Ones standing behind them?" His fingers drummed once on the throne’s armrest.
"When would the killing be enough? Or does one look at a certain point and say...it’s enough there? When is animosity enough, and when do you let go?"
No one interrupted. Even Emotive was still.
"Because as much as I love conflict, as a father, I start to think of all the countless who had nothing to do with the wars I waged with others...but I eradicated them all. And I have eradicated many." The words came flat and unflinching, a ledger read aloud.
"Entire hierarchies. Entire Civilizations. Beings who were simply born into the wrong banner in the wrong era, standing in formations they never chose, and I unmade them alongside their masters without slowing down to sort one from the other."
He let that sit, and then continued.
"I am currently distinguished as...THE True Human Emperor. And I have been thinking. I have been thinking about what I will do past THE Sealed One, and the Gilded and Infinite that he uses. About all those I have taken the lives of. I have been thinking some fairly crazy and grand thoughts, of how if I truly want to live by my identity, as THE True Human Emperor...should my gaze begin looking out across all of existence, to bring all those I deem Humans...under my fold?"
...!
"Every scattered branch of humanity across every Dimension and Observable Existence. Every people with that brief, burning, striving pattern I call Human, gathered beneath one crown." His eyes gleamed with something that was neither warmth nor coldness but both braided together.
"Would this be me enacting conquest, as I have done before? Or salvation? I do know it will empower me. Every Human under my fold feeds the identity, and the identity feeds everything I am. So maybe the question is not about conquest or salvation but moreso...am I selfishly acting with my nature in mind, to do something grand...simply for the sake of my power?"
He exhaled, and his mouth curved wryly.
"Ah, I am talking a lot. I am just wrestling with the idea of what I will do across existence...for the sake of my identity. I don’t think I will sit still."
...!
The silence that followed was brief.
Because THE Creature answered, and his flat voice came down grand!
"Existence is not idle."
His white-gold-threaded flames stirred as his gaze fixed on Noah.
"Existence isn’t something to simply be gawked at while a countless many die...because there are no rulers. I have walked across eras of it. I have seen what fills the spaces where no one governs. Harvests. Hoards. Lineages who believe everything is theirs, feeding on those who cannot answer back." His voice did not rise, and that made it heavier.
"As someone walking the path of Existence, I will tell you now that I seek to be a ruler. An Existential Ruler. A Great Ruler. Like Vakochev. So that I...can stand and declare how things should be."
...!
"If I don’t like how Gilded Ones are, I will change it. If I don’t like how Source Lifeforms are, I will change it! Countless Lifeforms out there struggle and suffer because those who are good...have no capacity to be strong and take care of business. I have an immense dislike to many lifeforms who consider themselves good and pious...while doing nothing as their neighbors die and are oppressed. Goodness without power is a lament. I have heard enough laments." His flat eyes darkened with something old.
"I wish to be in a position of power to ensure what happened to me doesn’t happen to anyone else. No half of anyone, brutalized while the other half watches. Not on any shore of Existence I rule."
Anaximander had gone completely still, listening with the focus of a scholar witnessing something worth recording forever!
"The conquest you mention...seems to be alongside the same lines as what I wish to do. You, Osmont, wish to be a Ruler!" THE Creature said it plainly.
"Vakochev...is too passive. He made Scales based on Adversity. Sure. His Scales were good. They allowed me to get where I am! But that pain, that adversity...let it come to those who seek it. The innocent who simply want to live and die, why should they suffer alongside everyone else? Why should a farmer climb the same bleeding ladder as a conqueror, or be left to rot at its base?" His flames pulsed once!
"No. Vakochev’s Scales are too...general. New Scales are needed. New direction is needed."
And then, for the first time in the entire exchange, something moved through THE Creature’s expression!
"I thought I may have been trying to enact my own vision alone. But it seems that you...have your own vision as well." He nodded once, slow and final. "This is more than okay. You or me...we can see which one of our visions can be painted across Existence!"
...!
Noah’s eyes pulsed with unfathomable brightness as he looked at THE Creature!
Two visions, spoken plainly over golden sands in a cursed Dimension! An Emperor of all Humans, and a Ruler of Existence itself! Not rivals, not yet, perhaps not ever, but two beings who had just discovered that neither of them intended to leave Existence as they found it, and an immense silence settled in this space as the golden island tore onward through the storm, carrying both of their futures toward a dying hope that nobody could say with surety...where it would end up.