Chapter 5161: Golden Wrath! IV

Sororis Prima Elzyana raised her pale pearlescent hands, and her body surged with a dense mixture of golden Observable Force and Infinity flowing outward from her skin in visible currents that bent the ambient air of THE Wyld toward her position as if the air itself was volunteering to contribute to the work she was about to do.

Between her raised palms, a construct began to form, blue-gold in its interwoven colors and pyramidal in its shape, its sides composed of small interlocking geometric facets that rotated slowly against each other in the same patient manner that the mandalas of her eyes rotated within their amber-gold borders, and the construct thickened and sharpened as she poured more of her authority into its formation until it floated between her palms as a dense weapon of bindings.

She pushed the construct downward toward Noah with a single small gesture!

Noah kept his defiant gaze locked on hers even as the construct descended as he committed to the posture of meeting her eyes and he intended to maintain that posture!

Faster than his current perception could properly track, faster than his Hadean Mind of Infinite Calculation could stretch the instant to accommodate, the pyramidal construct shot down from her palms and embedded itself into the back of his right hand with the clean precision of a seal settling into wax, and the back of his hand began to shine with the same blue-gold brilliance that had composed the construct as its facets folded into his skin and began to propagate inward.

As the process of the binding began to spread through him, Sororis Prima Elzyana continued calmly.

"It may help you, or perhaps merely amuse me, to explain what will be closed to you."

Her mandala-eyes drifted across him without warmth.

"In the ordinary course of a Bounded Lifeform’s progression, the path from the Second Scale passes through certain milestones that any being with sufficient cultivation can theoretically approach. At the peak of the Ediacaran Tier of THE Proterozoic Scale, one forges what is called THE Civilizational Forge, a new organ dedicated to compressing their Civilization into a denser and more refined state than it held during earlier tiers. The Forge iterates across eons of cultivation. Each pass through it compresses the Civilization further. Each compression makes the wielding of that Civilization sharper, more precise, more able to deliver concentrated expressions of its core axioms through single gestures and single words."

She made a small gesture with her free hand that produced a pale illustrative image of a compressing organ in the air beside her, the image rotating slowly for Noah’s benefit.

"Once THE Civilizational Forge reaches sufficient density, the being may attempt to enter what is called THE Transitional Cambrian stage, which sits between Second and Third Scale, and which requires the being to begin the conversion of their foundational matter from Proterozoic substrate into Paleozoic substrate at the cellular and sub-cellular levels across the entirety of their existence. Bounded Lifeforms such as yourself can reach Cambrian if they are exceptional enough, but they cannot cross fully into THE Third Scale, because the Bounded lattice cannot hold Paleozoic substrate without collapsing. Cambrian is your absolute ceiling in the ordinary course of things. Which, I should note, is an ambitious ceiling that almost none of you ever actually reach."

The illustrative image shifted into something resembling a ladder with a clearly marked upper boundary that the Bounded silhouettes on the lower rungs could never climb past.

"THE Third Scale itself, THE Paleozoic Scale, is where beings like myself exist. At Paleozoic, one becomes a Weapon of Existence. The casual presence of a Paleozoic being radiates what is called Existential Radiation, a passive emission that twists the arrangement of existence around the radiating body simply by the body occupying the space it occupies. A Paleozoic being walks through a region, and the region is never the same again. Ambient Observable Force in the walked path shifts its arrangement for hours or days or centuries depending on the intensity of the walker. Lesser beings caught in the wake experience foundational strain. Civilizations encountered without the proper engineering may fold into the radiating being’s cosmological alignment, their axioms rewriting themselves around the grander presence."

Her voice took on a slightly lecturing quality as she continued!

"A Paleozoic being at even my current tier, the Ordovician, can...ah, you wouldn’t even understand. At higher stages of Paleozoic, Silurian and Devonian, the capacities grow grander still. A basal primitive mind like yours...is not able to understand."

Her mandala-eyes rotated slightly as she seemed to savor the picture she was painting.

"All that future you would have never reached. You are Bounded. Your ceiling is Cambrian at the absolute most generous accounting, and almost no Bounded across recorded history actually achieves that ceiling. I offer you this preview not because you will ever approach it but because it serves as a useful reference for understanding what I am about to close to you."

The illustrative image dissolved back into the ambient air as she folded her hands together.

"The binding I impose on you will restrict your power, and the power of all others within this Observable Existence, to the Fundamental Depth of Vakochev’s First Scale."

BOOM!

"You will remember, yes, that you are the ant, and I am providing treatment to the soil. I am binding you and all others down here to that stage. Your cultivation will not exceed it. Your climbing will not extend beyond it. Whatever capacities you have already developed that sit above Fundamental Depth will be compressed downward into that stage until they fit within its boundaries. This first binding alone would be sufficient for most administrative purposes. But the circumstances of a Relictus emergence justify thoroughness, and so I will layer additional bindings into your existence to ensure that no further escape from the administered parameters becomes possible."

Her voice continued to list the bindings with clinical precision!

"You will be locked out from accessing and influencing Infinity. You will be locked out from accessing and influencing Observable Force, which means the ambient golden currents that saturate this existence will no longer respond to your call. You will be locked out from accessing and influencing Unobservable Force, though you would have never even touched it to begin with..."

She listed the next bindings with the same unhurried patience.

"Your Civilization will be bound into a dormant state. You will retain memory of it. You will no longer be able to wield it. Any capacities you developed that operated through Civilizational channels will cease to function. Any weavings you have placed across the Observable that depended on your Civilization being alive and active within you will dissolve."

Noah kept his defiant gaze on her through all of it, and system notifications bloomed through his perception in steady sequence as Ruination catalogued everything this dumb bitch said.

|Binding Applied: THE Scale Limiter.|

|Your accessible cultivation has been capped at the Fundamental Depth of Vakochev’s First Scale. Any capacities exceeding this threshold have been compressed into dormant storage within your existence. The binding assumes you operate within Vakochev’s Scales framework.|

|Binding Applied: THE Infinity Seal.|

|Your access to Infinity as a weaving has been severed. Ambient Infinity will no longer respond to your call.|

|Binding Applied: THE Observable Force Lockout.|

|Your access to the ambient currents of Observable Force has been blocked.|

|Binding Applied: THE Unobservable Force Lockout.|

|Your access to the deeper Unobservable substrates has been blocked.|

|Binding Applied: THE Civilizational Dormancy.|

|Your Civilization has been forced into dormant storage. You retain memory of its shape but cannot wield it.|

|Binding Applied: THE Weaving Severance.|

|Any weavings you have placed across the Observable that depended on your active Cause will dissolve.|

|Additional Binding Applied: THE Voice Restraint.|

|You are restrained from voicing disagreements against Sororis authority.|

|Additional Binding Applied: THE Deferential Posture.|

|You will find yourself physically inclined toward lowered gaze and reduced stature in the presence of Gilded Lifeforms. The inclination operates as a default orientation rather than an active compulsion, and it will require deliberate effort to resist.|

Really?

Was that right?! Okay. Okay!

Sororis Prima Elzyana continued for another long stretch as the bindings layered themselves into Noah’s perception, and Noah absorbed every word without breaking his gaze!

She did not realize the binding of THE Deferential Posture was being resisted!

When she finished, she looked at Noah calmly, and the expression on her face carried the same flat detached interest it had carried since she had first descended toward him, with no hostility and no satisfaction and no particular engagement, simply the steady observation of a being who had completed an action and was now waiting briefly to confirm the action had taken.

"You may find, in time, that the constraints are merciful."

Her voice softened slightly.

"Consider the extension of the analogy I offered you earlier. The ant in the treated soil often believes that the treatment represents a curtailment of the ant’s life. The ant mourns the loss of the broader colony. The ant struggles against the adjusted conditions. But across the long course of the ant’s subsequent existence, the ant may come to discover that the bounded conditions produce a form of peace that the broader colony never permitted. No expansion means no overreach. No overreach means no conflicts with other colonies at the edges of the territory. No conflicts means no casualties. The limitations allow the ant to live a simpler and less anxious life than the unlimited ant ever could have lived. Freer, in a certain specific sense, precisely because the capacity for unfree activity has been removed."

She folded her hands together in front of her.

"Sometimes, the ant simply needs to be grateful. The gardener’s treatment was not a punishment. It was a gift of reduced scope, which is also a gift of reduced suffering. Ants need to be thankful for this. Those of you who come to thankfulness across the years that follow will find the remainder of your existence to be calmer than the existence you would have otherwise constructed for yourselves. Those of you who do not come to thankfulness will continue struggling against constraints that cannot be overcome, and the struggling will be your only reward, and the reward will not be as satisfying as the thankfulness would have been."

Her mandala-eyes rotated slowly as she delivered the closing observation.

"Be thankful, Boy. Be thankful while you have the space to develop the thankfulness properly. It will make your bounded remainder more bearable than the alternative."

BOOM!

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