Chapter 5444: Across Time And Existence! I

He looked at Ryaenara’s grand figure as the last of her ancient appendages faded, and he shook his head again. He didn’t like this business of Inheritance, no matter how prettily she dressed it. Weavings from the beginning of time, channels waiting to claim him, a lineage he had never chosen. She could call it nature all she wanted. Anything he made would be his, and anything handed to him would be examined for hooks.

But there was a more useful question than arguing philosophy with something older than the argument.

"Set aside the Inheritance," Noah said. "Set aside the Existential Lineages. Answer me this instead. What is this IT that even THE Sealed One is after? And why hand the path to another?" His eyes sharpened on her.

"You’re powerful past anything I can measure. All lifeforms in existence chase power and immensity, it’s the one constant I’ve found everywhere I’ve gone. So why not walk the path yourself? Why not grasp IT with your own hands? Do you not have ambitions of your own? Why would a thing like you ever be a follower of anyone?"

His words came out sharp, and the figure before him smiled wider as the last limb dissolved, the crown of turning rings winking out, the rows of calm gold eyes closing one by one. Her exotic beauty returned, slender and wild and fair, and she regarded him with something close to approval.

"In existence, there are leaders and there are followers," Ryaenara said. "That has been true in every age I’ve seen, and I have seen more of them than nearly anything you will ever meet. I am an extremely old lifeform, Osmont. I am also, in the ways that matter for this conversation, extremely young. I have watched leaders rise and fall past counting. THE Sealed One is one terrifying force among them, but he was never the only one. There have been others who considered themselves leaders, some as astonishing as him, some far less, and I have outlived a great many of both by knowing one thing they didn’t."

She spread her hands lightly.

"My own capabilities. And my own limitations." Her smile didn’t waver as she said it, which somehow made it heavier. "I do not have the boundless potential required to hold IT. I could never. That is not modesty, it is measurement, and I am very good at measurement. For a long while I raged against that fate, and in trying to defy it, I was shown another way. I cannot say much about the showing. But I will tell you that all of it leads back to Those Who Remain."

She began to drift closer, unhurried, her bare feet passing over the still water of the stellar lake below the temple floor.

"And understand, I do not do any of this out of the goodness of my heart. I have been promised something. Something you could not begin to fathom until you hold IT yourself, if you ever come close to holding it. If THE Sealed One grasps IT first, I will never receive what I was promised. So I must do things differently than he does. I have run many plans across many ages, weighed many possibilities." Her vibrant eyes settled on him. "And right now I am looking at a new one. Do not worry about the terms. I know better than anyone that existence is give and take. THE Sealed One gave me your psychological and existential breakdown, who you are, how you move, what you protect. And now that I’ve met you, I’ve seen more than his little book ever could. You are one of the ambitious ones. You cannot sit still, it isn’t in you. Greatness quite literally finds you, because you emanate so much of it that existence keeps sending things your way to test whether it’s real."

She stopped before him, close now, her presence looming over his despite her slender frame, and her smile turned brilliant.

"And alongside greatness comes tremendous adversity. Yours, right now, is THE Sealed One himself. So tell me honestly." Her voice dropped, warm and coaxing. "Don’t you want to play in the big leagues? To make certain he never eradicates you, or the ones you protect? If you don’t believe a word I’ve said about IT and Lineage, that is more than fine, truly. Forget the Inheritance. Forget the Existential Lineage. Worry only about yourself, and let me open your eyes. To power. To history. To the unfathomable dangers moving all around you that you cannot yet see."

She tilted her head then, and something more careless entered her tone.

"Oh, and one more thing, while we’re being honest. Something with boundless potential is a terrifying delicacy to True Lifeforms. You were perfectly fine before I came along, sitting quiet and unannounced. But my little Gu released a glimpse of your potential out into existence, across frequencies and dimensions you cannot even fathom, and so I inadvertently put you in an extremely dangerous position. Haha. Who was I to know you’d light all nine wings?" She lifted one shoulder in an easy shrug.

"I sealed everything I could, masked you, veiled you, pulled you here before the first of them arrived. But, and understand I truly don’t want to threaten you here, but...I could also allow that leak to open wide again. I could simply step aside, and leave you to the wolves."

Her eyes shone dangerously as she said it.

And Noah’s shone with incandescent tyranny.

He stepped forward, straight into the space of a being whose power had no measurable ceiling, and the blue of him rose as he did, his presence unfolding until he was the one looking down at her, his voice flat and cold and absolute.

"I do not take kindly to being threatened."

...!

Ryaenara studied him from inches away, this young thing staring down an antiquity, and her smile softened.

"And I really didn’t want to threaten you," she said. "I mean that. Existence is vast, and full of terrors. That sentence was coined many, many ages ago, and a lot of lifeforms say it now without knowing what it meant when it was first said." Her voice gentled further, which made it worse.

"Existence is vast, Osmont. And I, and many others like me, are some of its terrors. That isn’t a threat. It’s a map. You have your wants, and I have mine, and they are genuinely not so different, which is the only reason this conversation is happening as a conversation."

She drifted back a half-step and let her hands fall open.

"And if everything else I’ve said means nothing to you, hold onto this one thing. THE Sealed One is a truly scary fucking guy. There is a reason the Infinite Lifeforms and the Source Lifeforms, or really, the True Lifeforms and the Primeval Lifeforms standing behind them both, had to work together just to cut him apart. All of them, cooperating, the only alliance of its kind in all of history, and even then they could not kill him. Only cleave and scatter and seal." Her smile returned, bright and sly. "So if you want to survive against a thing like that, I’m your girl. But like any girl, I have a few needs. And my needs all lead back to Those Who Remain. For that, I need Boundless Potential."

She looked at him, and every trace of play left her eyes for one naked instant.

"I need you."

BOOM!

She made her pitch, and Noah looked at her coldly, his existence buzzing through every calculation he owned. The danger of her. The use of her. The leak she had caused and sealed, the wolves circling frequencies he couldn’t perceive, the enemy who had been in his heart that all of existence had once bled to merely cut apart. His intuition turned it all over, and came back with its answer.

He stood before her, wreathed in his own rising blue, and said one thing.

"I AM."

HUUM!

He uttered the first letter of his Osmontian Tongue, and the single declaration rolled out of him carrying everything at once. Ryaenara’s eyes flew open wide, because in that one utterance she heard the whole of his answer. He affirmed exactly who he was, unbent and unthreatened and entirely his own, no Lineage’s creature and no follower’s follower. And folded inside the affirmation, unmistakable, was the second meaning, offered on his terms and no one else’s.

Okay.

His entire figure bathed itself in swirling blue flames, and Ryaenara’s smile became utterly pristine.

"Good," she said. "Haha. Fucking good." She began to pace around him, delight breaking through her ancient composure like light through old glass.

"You have so much to learn. Because as boundless as your potential is, you are, right now, fucking weak as fuck, and you know nothing. Nothing of what came before, nothing of what’s circling you, nothing of what you’re actually for. So let me stretch you out. Let me expand your knowledge, on True Lifeforms, on Dimensions of Existence, on all of it." Her eyes blazed as the plan assembled itself visibly behind them. "Because for you to inherit what you need to inherit, we will have to send you across existence and time itself, into Dimensions of Existence littered with Infinite, Source, Primeval, and True Lifeforms. The deep places. The old places. And some...do have remnants parts of THE Sealed One.."

She spun back to face him, and the smile she wore now belonged to something young.

"Oh, I am fucking excited. Haha. EXCITED!"

BOOM!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.