Chapter 5215: THE Primus Apeiron! V

Noah stood in the form he had spent eighty-one subjective days designing.

Multicolored scales covered his body, each one catching the ambient light and refracting it into shifting prismatic patterns that moved with his breathing. The golden lines of Observable Force threaded between the scales in visible flows, the gold warm against the multicolored surface. His four horns burned at their tips with their rotating singularities. His spiked tail extended behind him with patient presence. The dorsal protrusions rose along his back in their two parallel rows.

Above his head, a spinning multicolored crown of flame orbited. It burned with the full spectrum of his Quintessence Infiniforce, multicolored and brilliant and carrying the specific authority of a being who had built his crown rather than inherited it.

Multicolored flames of Infinity gushed from his entire form.

|THE Primus Apeiron Hadean Organ of Infinity: Anchored. Deployment authorized.|

Two burning crimson swords materialized in the air around him, orbiting his form with the steady rotation of newly integrated authority, the Bellum Cause burning in each blade with the patient willingness of a truth that had been waiting for a weapon to inhabit.

He roared!

"OOOOH!"

The sound was not human and was not entirely unhuman and was entirely his, carrying the full harmonic depth of a form that had been designed to produce exactly this specific quality of declaration as it burned with infinity and almost seemed...Mad!

As if filled with THE Gamaidjan!

BOOM!

He disappeared.

Behind him, the space where he had been standing held only the afterimage of multicolored brilliance and the residual warmth of Infinity that had just been present in significant density.

Naldine’s vihuela had gone quiet. Her singularity-dotted eyes looked at the space he had occupied with shock.

Arch Lich Ra’Zan said nothing.

Henry Osmont looked at the space his father had occupied with wide eyes and a slowly emerging expression of incredulity!

Before any of them could complete a thought worth voicing.

The illusory figure of Ruination materialized before them.

Crimson-blue luminescence, grand and composed, her presence carrying the specific authority of a system intelligence that had just received significant new operational parameters and was ready to begin deployment.

She looked at each of them in turn.

She snapped her hands.

Multiple multicolored singularities of Infinity bloomed throughout the surrounding space, each one pulsing with the warmth of a system ready to receive.

|THE Apeiron Hadean Engineering is available for integration. Master has already led the way. Enter THE Apeiron Hadean Organ of Infinity and receive your Apeiron Hadean Engineering so that your existences can advance and progress.|

|The war has been declared. The adversity has been designed. The mechanism is ready.|

|Enter.|

...!

---

In the multicolored Wandering Territories, a deluge of multicolored sea stretched in every direction, its surface carrying the specific quality of existence that had not yet decided what it wanted to become.

Sororis Prima Prabhavati floated above it in her radiant saree, her pulsing necklaces and earrings carrying the ambient authority of her Ordovician Paleozoic standing in their refined metalwork.

Beside her floated another Sororis Prima, robed in the layered gold of a different Sanctum’s administrative authority, her Ira Custodes flanking them both with the dense stillness of weapons in patient readiness.

Three Ordovician Paleozoic beings above a sea that had recently produced a Relictus emergence.

Prabhavati’s expression carried the specific weary precision of a being fulfilling an obligation she considered somewhat below her typical operational scope.

"We are wasting our time down here. A Relictus rising from this place after eons does not mean another will do so."

She let the observation settle.

"But I understand the threat and why we are here." A measured exhale. "Haaa."

The other Sororis Prima opened her mouth to reply, but...

BOOM!

Above them both, space cracked.

THE Primus Apeiron emerged from the crack with his full burning glory, multicolored flames gushing from his scaled form, the four horns burning at their tips, the crimson swords orbiting him in their steady rotation, the multicolored crown of fire spinning above his head.

The ambient Infinity of the Wandering Territories surged toward him the instant he appeared, the way Infinity had always moved toward concentrations of itself that exceeded the ambient density, the sea below him churning upward in rising currents that pressed toward his form with the eagerness of substance recognizing something grander than itself.

He looked down at the three Gilded Ones below him with eyes that burned crystalline blue and carried the specific coldness of a being for whom this engagement had already been accounted for in his planning.

He opened his mouth.

The sound that came out carried the harmonic depth of a being whose form had been designed to produce declarations that existence registered before minds registered them!

"War."

His voice carried across the multicolored sea.

"War."

The crimson swords burned brighter.

"WAR!"

BOOM!

Infinite brilliance rose from him in every direction simultaneously, the declaration made existential form, and below him the multicolored sea of the Wandering Territories began to churn with the urgency of existence that had just been informed that as of this moment, a new era was blooming!

---

<THE Creature, On Guardians and the Unguarded>

THE Relictus have never rested.

Across every age I have studied, across every record I have managed to pull from the archives of beings who survived long enough to write things down, THE Relictus have been present wherever THE Primordial Source gathered in sufficient density to attract attention. They fought the Gilded Ones who approached it.

They fought each other when no Gilded Ones were near. They fought the space itself sometimes, as though existence in the vicinity of THE Primordial Source required constant violent tending to remain what it was. I do not know if they chose this role or if the role chose them, and I suspect the distinction does not matter to them.

The point is that THE Primordial Source has never been unguarded.

I found this interesting for a long time without knowing why I found it interesting.

Then I began to think about Infinity.

Infinity is everywhere. It flows through Observable Existence and through THE Braneworld above it and through the spaces between spaces where beings like me spend our stranger hours.

Countless beings draw on it. Countless Civilizations are built from it. The Gilded engineer their people to breathe it. The Bounded climb toward it as the primary currency of their progression. It saturates everything that can be saturated and persists in everything else as an ambient condition that nobody thinks to question.

Nobody guards it.

No Relictus descends when a being draws on Infinity. No ancient force interposes itself between an Existence and the Infinite substrate they are about to tap. Infinity spreads freely, is used freely, is consumed and redirected and weaponized and engineered into the foundations of beings across the full span of existence without anything resembling the constant violent vigilance that THE Relictus apply to THE Primordial Source.

I spent considerable time wondering why.

I am not unbiased. I have touched THE Primordial Source and I know what it feels like and I am aware that my knowledge of that feeling inclines me toward overstating its significance relative to Infinity. I tried to account for the bias.

Even accounting for it fully, I could not arrive at a conclusion that placed THE Primordial Source above Infinity in any framework I trusted. Infinity is the ocean. THE Primordial Source is what the ocean rests on. Both are necessary. Neither is lesser.

The question of which deserves more vigilant protection should not, by any reasoning I could construct, produce the answer that the ocean goes unguarded while only the ground beneath it receives constant armed attention.

And then THE Apeiron appeared.

I did not understand what I was looking at immediately. I observed them from the distance that my current circumstances permitted and I registered the specific quality of what they were, beings burning with Infinity.

They were guards.

Not appointed ones. Not ancient ones with eons of territorial memory. New ones. Ones who had been designed rather than born into the role.

Someone...haha, yes, someone, had looked at the unguarded ocean and decided the ocean deserved the same attention as the ground.

I do not know yet where this leads. I know that it is one among many sparks of a change that existence has not yet finished registering. The Scales themselves seem to be holding their breath.

I have learned, across my eons, to pay attention when the Scales hold their breath.

-THE Creature, from his records

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