Chapter 5519: No Chance!
Chapter 5519: No Chance!
To lead. To rule!
Noah was already a leader and ruler, he already held the distinction of THE True Human Emperor as for him, it came naturally. His people, his crown, his fold, all of it had grown out of him the way branches grow from a trunk.
But now, he thought of the distinction of a Great Ruler.
Could he truly see himself returning to glorious Conquest and expanding his rule across...THE Source Lands? THE Infinite Carcosa? And even across Dimensions of Existence themselves?! Would this be his quickest route to power, every Human gathered beneath his identity feeding the Letter that fed everything else?
He was thinking such grand thoughts when...
HUUM!
"Aba, the hateful cause is accelerating towards us!"
Seo-yeon’s warning cut across the golden sands, and it came as a shock! For they had been moving at tremendous speeds in another direction entirely, streaking toward the hopeful dying Cause, and yet what she considered the hateful dying cluster was the one reaching them first!
Noah’s will surged as the golden platform accelerated further, his Ananke Intent flooding across every grain of dream-sand as the entire island took on a deep blue hue, a comet of gold and cerulean tearing through the storming dark of THE Krazhor-Nul.
Light years folded beneath them. The Ego of Humilitas wrapped them tighter than it ever had!
And it did not matter.
For behind them, pressing through the storm like the fingers of a closing hand, he and all the others could now sense a terrifying set of auras! Many auras! Heavy past framing, and gaining!
Noah sighed once.
Then he patted Seo-yeon gently on the head. "You need to go back inside for now."
His daughter looked up at him, and she did not argue, for she could feel what was coming better than anyone! She nodded as mirrored light gathered around her small frame. "Aba... be careful."
She folded away into THE Infiniverse!
Noah’s gaze turned to Emotive next, and he nodded once. Emotive pouted enormously, opened her mouth to protest, read his eyes, closed her mouth, and retreated into THE Infiniverse with her arms crossed the entire way down!
And in the next moment...existence congealed.
The storm around them thickened like cooling tar as the golden island’s tremendous speed began bleeding away for no reason Noah’s senses could name, space itself growing dense, resistant, wrong! He poured more Intent into their passage. The island surged. And then the concept of space seemingly became nullified entirely, for no matter how much further Noah pushed, no matter how many light years his will declared crossed...he found they were in the same space!
The horizon refused to approach. The distance refused to close! They flew, and they arrived nowhere, held inside a single stretch of storm like an insect in a trap.
|An extremely potent Ananke Intent has pervaded the surroundings. Its weavings mark it as belonging to a Source True Lifeform, and its declaration is simple: this space does not release what stands within it.|
...!
At these words, the faces of Noah, THE Creature, Anaximander, and THE Infiniverse all hardened as they gazed back!
And they saw...a group of utterly terrifying beings.
The storm behind them had filled with True Lifeforms! More than twenty of them spread in loose formation across the dark sky, over half pressing down with the weight of THE Cenozoic Scale, antlered and flamed and stone-hided apex existences whose idle comfort had sharpened into readiness! Among them coiled Ormarr Grimtunge, whole and massive, his crimson eyes gleaming with long-awaited delight.
Beside him flew a woman in red robes whose cold face and crimson gaze emanated nothing, absolutely nothing, except the promise of murder!
And behind them all...was a monstrous, cursed thing.
Noah’s eyes fixed upon it, and even his composed heart pressed heavier in his chest!
It was colossal beyond the entire party combined, a mountainous quadruped whose gray hide had gone the color of forgotten things, its titanic frame furrowed with fissures through which its failing First Cause guttered.
Chains of screaming crimson metal wrapped its throat. Its breath dragged like landslides! And its eyes...its eyes were vast pools of dying light filled with pain and hate and coldness all at once, the gaze of something that had been walking in agony for so long that agony had become its only remaining language, and beneath all of it, Noah could feel its dying Causes, and they were so heavy.
So heavy!
And then its ambient field touched them.
The Steed of Oblivion’s suppression rolled across the trapped island like a tide of gray silence, and for the first time in her existence, THE Infiniverse made a sound of pain!
It felt like...Pantheon compression! Noah felt his own Pantheon strain against his backbone as its realms refused to unfurl, thousands of skies pressing inward as if a hand had closed around his home, and the ambient Biomass tick that had fed him since their hatching simply...stopped! Within THE Infiniverse, nested Observable Existences groaned as her weavings cramped, and Ruination’s prompts arrived colder than they had ever been.
|The Steed’s ambient field is an architecture of dimensional sovereignty, designed by Those Who Remain to keep their mounts paramount above all other dimensional laws. Within its range, THE Quintessential Pantheon of THE Infiniverse cannot fully unfurl. THE Quintessential Confluence will function at reduced grades. The Absolute Dimensional Ruling holds for now, but the field is not attacking it. It is slowly denying it the right to exist. Everyone inside THE Infiniverse is safe at this moment. That statement has a time limit, and I do not yet know its length.|
...!
The coldest prompts she had ever delivered!
And through the gray pressure, the woman in red spoke. Exactly once. Her voice was quiet, toneless, and it landed across the trapped space like a blade being drawn from its sheath in a silent room.
"Kneel, and most of you will be kept alive."
That was all. No threat performed, no power flared! Just a fact, stated by something shaped for killing, and the twenty True Lifeforms behind her settled into formation as though the outcome had already been filed!
And beside her, Ormarr Grimtunge finally had his moment!
The great Serpent uncoiled forward through the storm, rising high above the trapped golden island with his reassembled bulk gleaming, and his laughter rolled out rich and vindicated, a follower savoring the taste of overwhelming force at his back.
"Hey now, look at this! Two of you have actually gathered back together!" His crimson eyes swept from Noah to THE Creature, drinking in their hardened faces like fine wine. "Haha, existence is being truly kind today! The seated fucker and the grave-walker, wrapped up in one net! Do you know what I had to endure because of you two? Do you know what it is to be a length of yourself short in front of your betters?!" His coils flexed as his smile stretched wide and brutal!
"No matter. No matter at all! It seems like...it is the end of the road for you all!"
This vindictive fucker began to look at them with glee.
And in Noah’s eyes, at this exact moment...time seemingly stopped.
He stretched a moment of an instant into infinity!
His perception expanded through the frozen frame, the Serpent’s gloating suspended mid-syllable, the blade in red hanging motionless, the Steed’s guttering Causes flickering in place, and within that endless instant, THE True Human Emperor went to work! For a battle against this was not a battle.
THE Protagonist’s Omniscient Regard activated!
His gaze swept across Lissana, across Ormarr, across the host, across the Steed, and many others, and the Character Sheets bloomed!
|Character Sheet: Lissana. Designation: THE Edge That Was Forged. Source True Lifeform. Her Ananke Intent is the declaration currently sealing this space. Danger to you: extreme. In direct combat, she alone exceeds your current fused ceiling. Disposition: no malice, no favor, nothing. You are a task. Motivations: she was forged, literally, her existence refined across a True lifetime. Notable thread: she does not know why twenty were sent by Jarl Erling for this errand, and unexplained orders unsettle the only thing she trusts, her function. Notable thread: her deepest buried thread is a single question she has never been permitted to ask: what she is when there is nothing to kill? Notable thread: her orders are capture, not slaughter. THE Infiniverse is to be taken undamaged, and she has been told nothing about why. She dislikes fighting blind more than she dislikes anything in existence.|
|Character Sheet: Ormarr Grimtunge. True Lifeform. Danger to you: Moderate, and currently irrelevant, as he will not act before Lissana does. Disposition: hatred, humiliation, hunger for redress. Motivations: to restore his standing with Jarl Erling. Notable thread: he was commanded to secrecy. No other Jarl may learn of this errand, and Ormarr believes this secrecy is about his master’s pride. He has not asked himself what discovery would be worth hiding. Notable thread: he fears the blade in red far more than he fears you, and he fears one further thing above even her: being blamed if this errand fails. It cannot fail, be has to deliver!|
|Character Sheet: THE Steed of Oblivion. Designation: Ghrimhest, THE Fourth of the Second Brood. A living Observable Existence of the old broods, its First Cause in terminal collapse for ages beyond counting. Danger to you: absolute. There is no chance of victory against it. None. Its ambient sovereignty predates every framework you climb, its dying field grows stronger the longer you stand inside it, and even if all of you fight with everything, together, at your peaks...you cannot win! Its body does not need to strike you. Its existence alone is the strike. Motivations: none remain. Pain has replaced them all. Notable thread: it hates its handlers more than it hates its cargo. Notable thread: beneath the pain, its dying Causes are still listening. For what, it no longer remembers. Notable thread: ?????|
...!