Chapter 5281: Dust II

The unique l Superbius capability unfurled from her foundations with the sustained backing of the Fourth Scale entities beside her and Sororis Prima Elizabeth and the ten Sororis Primas distributed through the formation!

The capability took form in the surrounding space rather than from any single point within it, the collective pride of a formation amd power at full expression finding a shape!

A Peacock!

Massive. Golden!

Its body composed not of physical material but of condensed Existential Radiation and Infinity and Observable Force and Superbius and Ira and Cause authority compounded across many Paleozoic Scale beings and multiple entities at the Fourth Scale, the form solid enough to press against the surrounding reality rather than simply occupying it!

Its tail spread across Gigaparsecs of observable space in a fan of golden feathers, each feather carrying concentrated pride that moved through the surrounding existence like a solvent, the emotion not expressing itself as a mood but as a physical condition, pride gushing from the form in waves that melted the structural coherence of the space it touched!

Its eyes burned crimson.

The eyes of Ira Gilded Ones who had fed their rage into the Superbius expression, the war-nature of the Bellum Cause running through the pride of the Cognitio Cause in a compound expression that made the peacock’s gaze not merely proud but hungry, its attention on Sir William Arthur bring imperious!

It was saying bow down!

How dare you stand before me!

The waves of pride reached Sir William!

They found him and ran across him and moved past him, and he remained exactly where he was, unblemished, his existence occupying the space the pride waves passed through with the flat indifference of something that had been introduced to pride and had found the introduction...unimpressive.

The golden solvent that had been melting the surrounding reality’s structural coherence found no purchase on his foundations.

He looked at the peacock.

He reached up with two fingers and straightened his tie.

His other hand closed around the hilt of the blade in the obsidian sheath.

He spoke as gloriously, it was a letter from THE Primordial Tongue!

"Destruere."

...!

HUUM!

The draw was one motion.

From sheath to extension in a single arc, and from the blade’s edge as it completed the arc, a massive blow of obsidian liquid erupted, murky and dark and carrying the concentrated expression of THE Primordial Source in a physical form that existing classification frameworks had no adequate language for.

The liquid moved as a crescent, a curved obsidian flash that traveled at a speed the eye registered only as before and after rather than as motion, and it hit the peacock’s body and continued past it!

The crescent carved.

It carved through the pride waves and through the Existential Radiation that had been pressing against reality and through the collective Superbius authority of all Gilded and Fourth Scale expressions as though these were textures of the space rather than forces within it, and the carving did not stop at the peacock’s far side!

It continued outward through the Observable Existence itself, cutting through Gigaparsecs of space in the direction it had been sent, the obsidian liquid of THE Primordial Source expression splitting the entire region in half along the crescent’s path and sealing the cut in obsidian as it traveled!

OOOH!

The Observable Existence remained torn.

It would remain torn.

The peacock gushed.

The golden pride that composed its body erupted from the cut as blood erupted from a wound, the condensed Superbius authority pouring out of the severed form in golden cascades as the peacock’s structure lost coherence along the cut’s path and the loss of coherence spread outward from there, the entire form collapsing under the compound failure of the expressions that had been sustaining it.

Vireth dropped!

The three Fourth Scale entities who had traversed time dropped alongside her, and Sororis Prima Elizabeth dropped, and the ten Sororis Primas across the formation dropped, and the Devonian Ragnars dropped, and the Silurian formations staggered!

Every being in the assembled Legion who had fed their authority into the peacock expression receiving back through that feed the consequence of the expression’s total collapse!

Thousands of cuts appeared across their bodies simultaneously, the obsidian crescent’s passage through the collective expression leaving its record on every existence that had contributed to it.

Crimson-gold blood poured from the cuts in volumes that didn’t stop, the bodies of Devonian and Silurian Gilded Ones heaving as their existences rejected what had been done to the authorities they had invested, the rejection physically expressed.

They puked crimson-gold blood where they floated.

Their existences turned sickly.

Taylor grabbed her own arms with both hands and looked at herself and then looked around at the decimated Legion and then looked at Adrastia beside her and then let out a long exhale that ended in laughter.

"What the absolute fuck!" she said. "We’re fine! We’re completely fine! Holy shit!"

She laughed and cursed and laughed again, the release of someone who had spent an extended period convinced they were about to experience something terrible and had discovered they were not!

In the distance, Sir William Arthur began walking.

He walked toward Vireth unhurried, his blade back in its sheath, the obsidian liquid of THE Primordial Source no longer visible but its record written across the torn Observable Existence in every direction the crescent had traveled.

He looked at Vireth where she floated amid the cascade of crimson-gold blood and the sickly rejection her existence was producing, and at the three Fourth Scale entities beside her in equivalent states, and he spoke with the same measured precision he had applied to everything else.

"I find, in my experience, that most unfortunate situations trace directly back to a single original decision." He reached Vireth’s position and stopped. "Decisions compound. A single poor decision produces conditions that make the next poor decision feel necessary, and that decision produces conditions that make the one after it feel inevitable, and by the end of the chain, the beings involved have arrived at a destination they never consciously chose while having made every individual choice that led there."

He looked at Vireth with something that was not cruelty and was not compassion but was simply the attention of a being completing a task.

"You chose to travel. You chose to attempt revision. You chose to stand in the way of the verdict. Three decisions, each compounding on the last."

He tapped his hand outward once.

Vireth disappeared.

He tapped again.

The second Fourth Scale entity disappeared.

Again.

The third.

Again.

The fourth.

The space where they had been held the crimson-gold blood they had produced for a moment, floating in the torn Observable Existence, before the lockdown’s conditions dispersed it into the substrate.

Sir William Arthur straightened his jacket.

"Consequences," he said to no one in particular, "are simply decisions arriving at their natural destination."

WAA!

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