Chapter 5254: THE Strand of Broken Scales I

The crabs held their line with the specific anxiety of creatures that had very recently been inside a lightning ring and had not yet decided whether the current situation was better.

Noah looked at them.

One of them, the largest, began to raise its claw in the opening motion of the Bloom Rite.

"If you begin dancing again," Noah said, "I will fry you and eat the meat. All of you."

The claw lowered.

"Good. Now." He crouched to their eye level, his Galdr Source multicolored and calm around him. "Tell me the locations of any areas you never venture into. Anything in the surrounding region that you avoid. Any Galdr Source beings like the one that killed your people."

The crabs looked at each other.

They began clicking their claws in rapid sequences, the sounds overlapping and rhythmic, and tendrils of obsidian Infinity moved between them as the clicking carried information that the Infinity translated outward. Noah’s Infinite Tongue reached into the ambient communication and pulled what it could, the shape of a region assembling itself from the crab’s collective knowledge into something he could orient around.

They were in a stretch of coast the crabs had no name for but that his Tongue organized as THE Strand of Broken Scales, a region running several hundred miles along the beach and extending inland to where the forest thickened into terrain the crabs considered categorically non-survivable for their kind. The beach and the rocky terrain behind it were their domain. The forest border was not.

Three areas the crabs never went:

The first was north along the coast, where the dark waters churned in a pattern that suggested something very large moving beneath them at regular intervals. The Source Eel from their arrival was a possibility. Something larger was also a possibility. The crabs had not investigated because the crabs that had investigated had not returned.

The second was inland and east, where the vegetation gave way to a clearing the crabs could sense from the border but approached no closer to. The ambient Source pressure from the clearing registered to them as something that had claimed territory so thoroughly that approaching it produced a specific biological response they had learned to respect.

The third was directly ahead in the deep forest, where the tree canopy had grown so dense that the Illumination Flowers’ light did not reach the ground beneath it, and the things that lived in that permanent dark had developed accordingly.

The Galdr Sources that used Persevere, the crabs communicated through their clicking and their Infinity tendrils, were concentrated in the second area. The clearing. Several of them. They were why nothing else used the clearing.

Noah rose.

He turned and found Eon already walking toward him from the direction of the tree line, her golden skin catching the bloom light with the specific quality of someone who had been through something physical and had not paused to address the evidence of it.

Her figure was dazzling and blood-streaked in equal measure, the obsidian-multicolored Infinity she had borrowed from him still cycling around her as she tore a piece from the Utahraptor leg in her hand with the focused interest of someone whose Satiety was responding well to the input.

She came to stand beside him and chewed and looked at the crabs.

"This place amplifies your emotions considerably." She said it with a thoughtful cadence. "You feel a thrill when you are hunting and eating. It becomes almost bloodthirsty. As if seeking dominance is simply in one’s nature."

...!

Her figure swayed as she said it, the specific unconscious motion of a being whose basal states were running at this place’s amplified baseline, and Noah looked at the horizon and repeated a mantra in his mind to calm himself and not jump Eon’s dazzling figure.

He stood.

"Everybody wants to be big and strong," he said. "Dominance and power is something every Source will inherently seek here. That is what this place makes plain. And right now we need to keep seeking it." He looked toward the deep vegetation.

"The crabs gave me a picture of the surrounding region. There are Galdr Sources ahead that use Persevere. If I take down four more, I will have the full letter of THE Primordial Tongue."

Eon finished the piece she was eating and came to stand fully beside him.

"We have only just arrived," she said, "and the one they were looking down on is already making headway fast enough to be the most significant entrant from either House."

She paused.

"I still sense the portion of my existence left behind at the Veiled Causal Site. Sororis Prima Evangelina has been communicating with it. She is coordinating to group the entrants together for better survival odds." Her eyes found his with the expression of a being asking something she was aware is unusual. "What...should I tell her?"

...!

Noah looked at her.

He was her Custos. She was not supposed to be asking him what information to provide to her own people. She was supposed to be directing him. Something had shifted in the hours since they had arrived on this beach together, in the cave, in the dark and the bloom light and the hunting, and the shift had expressed itself as this question, and the question was significant enough that he looked at her for a moment without answering it!

Her expression was open. Her radiant skin caught the bloom light with the warm gold of her Source expression underneath. Her eyes were patient and waiting and completely genuine as...damn, he couldn’t hold back!

He took her lips.

The obsidian Infinity around both of them bounced outward at the contact, their respective Sources reacting to the contact with the enthusiasm of things operating without the filtering their cultivated existence had been maintaining between them, and he did not rush the conclusion of it.

When he finally did let her go, tendrils of Infinity connected from his lips to hers for a moment before dispersing into the ambient air.

Eon breathed out heavily.

"What...was that for? I told you. Emotions here are amplified. You cannot do things like that!"

Her eyes had a fiery light that said something contradictory to the words.

He controlled himself.

"I couldn’t help it." He turned toward the forest. "We will make time for this later. Right now we establish enough power in this region that nothing here can threaten us."

He looked back at her once.

"Tell Evangelina you have been managing the common beasts. You will look for the others when the immediate area is secure."

...!

The Seidr Crabs watched them leave from their line on the dark sand, their claws still for once, their crimson eyes tracking the two figures moving toward the rising vegetation with the attention of beings who had provided information and were now invested in what would happen to the beings they had provided it to.

Noah’s Satiety panel read 97%. Eon had reached 100% somewhere between the Utahraptor’s legs and the present moment.

The forest received them, the massive baobab and banyan formations rising above as the bloom light filtered down through the canopy in shifting golden columns, and the ambient pressure of the deeper terrain pressed against their Sources with the welcome weight of somewhere that took things seriously.

They went in!

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