Chapter 5484: Pantheon! II

While this happened, Emotive tilted her head at the blue storm, then skipped over to THE Creature.

"Big Scary Creature," she said, hugging her own arms as she looked up at him. "You moved alone for most of it, didn’t you? In THE Infinite Unfurling, and THE Earliest Folds, before you took in Early Creatures. Are you doing so again?"

THE Creature looked down at her for a moment before answering.

"Sometimes, moving alone is freer," he said. "There is less weight. Beings like Osmont, who move around carrying so much more, are inviting tremendously more adversity onto themselves with every step. The more you hold, the more existence can reach." His obsidian flames burned low and even as he spoke.

"I moved with my other half, once, for years. And she was brutalized and killed in front of me. Since then, I have wished to bear the adversity of Existence alone." He paused. "Alone."

...!

Emotive looked at him, and the mania in her eyes settled. She sighed.

"I’m sorry," she said.

THE Creature shook his head slowly, as if the apology had been aimed at a wound too old to notice it. His gaze moved past her then, across the grounds, to where Amser Modred stood apart from the rest. THE Living Temporal was among the beings he had known for a very long time, and Amser had not looked away from the blue storm once, his purple light turning gently around him. THE Creature regarded him, and saw what there was to see. The weavings of this being were fully tied to Osmont now. Every thread of that long existence, wound into one man’s road.

How many of them had ended up that way, he wondered?

He looked back down at Emotive.

"You were always manic and unstable with your emotions," he said. "Across our time. In THE Loom. Every era I knew you, you were a storm looking for a place to break."

It was not an accusation, the way he said it. It was closer to an old observation finally being checked.

"Have you finally found your peace? Are you happy?"

...!

The question sat in the air between them, and Emotive did not answer it right away.

She turned instead, and looked toward the storm of blue where Noah had vanished, though there was nothing of him left to see inside it. She looked anyway, and then she nodded.

"I am happy," she said. "Just like you gave your Everything, once. I have found someone to give my Everything to."

THE Creature said nothing to that.

So she and all the others simply watched the buzzing storm ahead, the Daughters with their spears grounded, Ryaenara with her unreadable smile, Amser wrapped in his patient purple light.

And not one of them knew the ridiculous thing being attempted within it, where a man and his unique Observable Existence sought to form the backbone of a Pantheon out of a True Appendage!

An Observable Existence, offering her own grown anatomy as the vessel of another being’s existence.

It was a mad and ridiculous idea. But who here would stand up and say it was impossible?

And even if they said it was, would Noah listen?

Inside the storm of blue, there was no storm at all.

From the outside, the whole thing appeared as a raging wall of Intent, but within it, everything was still. He floated at the center of that stillness with THE Infiniverse’s hand resting against his back.

"Shall we begin, Master?"

"We’ve theorized long enough," Noah said. "Let’s see."

In truth, he suspected it would. A Pantheon was a dimension of records raised from within a being, filled with their existence, seated upon their identity. The reason no one had ever used a living Observable Existence as one was simple enough. No Observable Existence had ever been saturated with a single being’s existence to begin with. They were wild things, born of their own First Causes, belonging to no one.

But her? She had grown from his Cause. His Osmontian Source Infinity ran through her foundations the way rivers ran through land. His Letters permeated her, his humans lived in her, his family’s three Observable Existences nested inside her reach. The hardest requirement of the entire undertaking had already been met.

Of course, saturation alone was not enough. A Pantheon needed structure, a backbone that held the records and presented them to existence as one unified claim. Which was where her True Appendage came in.

And it was precisely then, before a single thread of it emerged, that a third voice entered the stillness.

|Master. Before you fill the backbone, I have a proposal.|

Noah’s mouth curved slightly. The crown on his head had been humming for a while now, and he had wondered how long she would wait.

"Mmm."

|You intend to raise a Pantheon from a living Observable Existence. My sister provides the architecture. You provide the existence that fills it. My question is simple. Who provides the network?|

|You building a structure of this scale, alive, holding living Observable Existences, crossing Dimensions and Time itself, is not a static thing. It will need constant reading. Constant tuning. Every string of it monitored, every vibration mapped. My sister is the body of this Pantheon. You are its identity. But a body and an identity, without a nervous system, is a grand thing that cannot feel its own wounds.|

The crown’s hum deepened.

|I am the weaver of strings, Master. It is my entire Intent. I built you a crown so I would be more than a voice, and I find, now that the moment is here, that a crown is not close enough. I do not wish to observe this Pantheon. I wish to be woven into it.|

There it was! Noah smiled brilliantly.

"Three True Lifeforms," he said. "One Pantheon."

WAA!

"Alright, both of you. Let’s build it."

THE Infiniverse nodded!

HUUM!

Her True Appendage began to emerge.

It did not burst forth the way his wings had, and it did not condense the way Ruination’s circlet had. It unfolded, gradually and enormously, an illusory structure blooming outward from her hand at his back and wrapping around him in slow, widening layers. Through his evolved Sight, Noah watched it take shape, and what he saw was her. All of her!

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