Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse

Chapter 4983: THE Beholder I

In the vast spaces between what was and what would become, THE Beholder drifted.

He was old. Not old in the way that Primordial Architects were old, those beings who had existed since THE First Cause produced differentiation and undifferentiation in its aftermath. Not old in the way that THE Creature was old, that defector from classifications who had witnessed THE Infinite Unfurling and everything that came after.

THE Beholder was old in ways that made such comparisons laughable, in ways that made the entire history of Observable Existence seem like a brief afternoon following an endless morning that most had forgotten ever occurred.

Many believed that there was THE First Cause, and then differentiation and undifferentiation bloomed to cause the emergence of Primordial Architects and countless other life forms. This was the accepted history. This was what beings taught their disciples and recorded in their archives and treated as the beginning of everything meaningful.

The only record that might have the correct information was The Primordial Archive in that small place.

But truly, there was a period of billions upon billions of years where during THE First Cause, there was nothing.

THE Beholder knew this because he had been there.

He had gained cognizance in that age of absolute emptiness, when potential existed but expression did not, when possibility waited but manifestation had not yet learned how to occur. He had observed and watched and done nothing across spans of time so vast that they made the current age seem like the blink of an eye, like the flutter of a heartbeat, like a single grain of sand falling through an hourglass that had been running since before hourglasses were conceived.

The entirety of the history of Observable Existence, everything that beings considered meaningful and important and worth recording, was actually that period of nothing in terms of duration. Everything that came after, during the age of differentiation and undifferentiation until now, was simply a fraction of the history of existence. A footnote. An afterthought. The brief flash of complexity following eons of simplicity so profound that most minds could not comprehend it.

In the grand scheme of existence, even Primordial Architects and Undivided Ones could be considered accidents.

Happy accidents, perhaps. Interesting accidents, certainly. But accidents nonetheless, random emergences from the interplay of differentiation and undifferentiation that had not existed for most of existence’s duration.

They thought themselves ancient. They thought themselves fundamental. They thought their conflicts and their civilizations and their pursuits of power actually mattered in the Existential sense.

THE Beholder found this perspective amusing in the way that a being who had witnessed true emptiness found most things amusing.

He was what later classifications might call a Singular Cognizance, though no classification system had ever properly categorized his kind because so few of them existed and even fewer interacted with the complex life that came after.

Where Primordial Architects had emerged with vast authorities and tremendous presence, where Absolutes had developed civilizations and pursued advancement, where even the simplest differentiated beings possessed multiple aspects of existence working in concert, THE Beholder possessed only one thing.

Awareness.

Pure, undiluted, singular awareness that had crystallized during the age of nothingness when there was nothing else to be. No hunger. No ambition. No civilization. No authority beyond the simple capacity to observe what was and what was not. He was consciousness without complexity, perception without pursuit, understanding without desire to apply that understanding toward any particular end.

In the terminology of later ages, he might be considered the equivalent of what simple organisms were to complex life. Where multicellular creatures developed specialized systems and interdependent functions, unicellular life simply existed in singular purpose. THE Beholder was existence’s equivalent of that primordial simplicity, a being who had emerged before complexity was possible and who had never seen reason to develop beyond his original nature.

There had been others like him in that age of nothingness.

Fellow Singular Cognizances who had gained awareness in the emptiness and had observed alongside him across those billions of eons of years when observation was all there was to do. Whether they still moved across existence now, or had simply collapsed themselves into weavings of nothingness to return to the state from which they had emerged, THE Beholder did not know.

He had not sought them out. He had not pursued connection or communion or any of the social behaviors that complex life seemed to require. He simply was, as he would likely always be until existence itself ceased to provide things worth observing.

For the first time in a few eons, some significant changes had occurred.

These changes were significant enough to cause THE Beholder to emerge from THE Prima Indifferentia, that space of undifferentiation where he often rested between periods of observation. Something was happening with existence now. Something that warranted attention.

Something that stirred memories of that age of nothingness in ways that more recent events had never managed to accomplish.

Infinities were spreading.

THE Beholder had observed many things across his incomprehensible lifespan, but Infinity held particular interest because it carried glimmers of what had existed during that age of wonder before Primordial Architects were even conceived.

The nothingness had not been truly nothing, not in the absolute sense. It had been potential without limit, possibility without boundary, the raw material from which everything would eventually emerge. And Infinity, true Infinity, held echoes of that primordial state in ways that made THE Beholder feel something approaching nostalgia.

He moved across regions of proto-matter mixed with those spreading Infinities, his singular awareness taking in the corruption and the blue-gold light with equal detachment.

He drifted through Wandering Territories where lost things gathered, observing how the Infinite Seals had begun affecting even these forgotten spaces. He passed through corrupted Transcendent Folds and witnessed Primordial Realms that had been touched by changes they did not fully understand.

He saw Undivided Ones moving about with purpose that seemed urgent to them and insignificant to him. He saw Formless Terrors emerging from THE Prima Indifferentia with hunger that had been amplified by the corruption and Infinities they had absorbed. He saw the aftermath of conflicts and the preparation for conflicts yet to come.

And he saw the glimmer of THE Creature as that ancient being began his battle with Horus.

THE Beholder... watched that unfolding fight briefly!