Read Novel Full Chapter 5430: Identity!
Chapter 5430: Identity!
A being is not a thing that simply exists. A being is a thing that decides what it exists for, and is then bound, absolutely, by the deciding.
This was the cold truth the very old Lifeforms of THE Source Lands had circled for ages, the ones who thought in the dark while lesser beings merely fought. Identity, they concluded, was not description. It was law a being legislated onto itself, a maxim held so completely that it became the very architecture of what one was. The grandest beings did not have strong identities. They were their identities, with no remainder, no gap between the rule and the ruled, and it was precisely that seamlessness, that total self-legislation, which let a True Lifeform’s Egoic Intent reorganize existence around the bare fact of a name. To be without contradiction was to be unanswerable. The old ones understood this perfectly.
And understanding it did many lifeforms almost no good at all.
Knowing the key was not the same as turning it. Across the ages, sufficiently powerful Infinite Lifeforms and Source Lifeforms and the grandest of the Gilded all came, eventually, to understand that identity was the road to the terrifying power of the True. The knowledge was not even rare. It was practically common, among beings old and powerful enough. And still only a vanishing few could walk the road, because a being could study the map of itself for an entire Age and never once arrive, could know with perfect clarity what was required and simply not have the thing required.
The Source Lands still told the story of Olmander the Unwavering, a Source Lifeform of a genuine Olympian Intent, who learned the secret and resolved to seize it through sheer force of declaration. For one entire Age he stood upon a mountain of his own making and screamed his identity into existence. He screamed what he was and what he stood for and what he would never bend from, day upon year upon century, his voice wearing grooves into the surrounding reality, his conviction by every account sincere. He believed it. He meant every word!
And after an Age of screaming I Am! I Am! I Am!... not a single glimmer of an Egoic Intent had formed around him. Not a flicker. He had the volume and the will and the perfect theoretical understanding, and he did not have the thing underneath all of it, the seamlessness, the it, and so he came down off his mountain hoarse and unchanged, and the Source Lands have laughed at him gently ever since, the way one laughs at a thing that is also a little heartbreaking.
Sometimes a being simply did not have it.
It.
And no amount of knowing could conjure what was not there.
---
Somewhere in THE Source Lands, a temple stood that had it in abundance.
It rose out of a sea of slow golden mist, massive and ancient, its tiers climbing up and up into a sky the color of old honey and deep blue, every surface worked in gold and threaded with obsidian and blue veins of Primordial Source that pulsed faintly like a slow heartbeat. The air around it smelled of warm glory and power and something older underneath, the dry mineral scent of a place that had stood since near the beginning.
THE Aurum Vakshara, the temple was called, the ancient seat of a lineage of Source Lifeforms known as THE Originals, among the oldest continuous bloodlines in all the Source Lands, and the signatures of beings at the Triassic and Mesozoic Scales sat scattered across its tiers in meditation and conference, Fourth and Fifth Scale existences as stood as massive pillars!
The hierarchy of the place was written in altitude. The more powerful an Original, the higher they sat, and the highest tiers pressed down on the lower ones with a weight that made the lesser Mesozoic beings keep their eyes lowered.
On one of the higher floors, a group of Mesozoic Scale beings finished their business and bowed, deeply, before taking their leave down the golden stairs.
They bowed to a woman seated on a golden mat.
She looked wild, and free, in a way that sat strangely against the rigid ancient grandeur of the temple around her. A smile rested perpetually on her face, easy and amused, and she hummed quietly to herself as the Mesozoic beings withdrew, a small tuneless melody, as though she were somewhere far more pleasant than a seat of cold power. Her body was graceful and slender, her legs long and fair, folded beneath her on the mat, and her eyes were large and vibrant and far too knowing. She seemed, at a glance, like the least serious thing in the building.
And yet her power, even held loose and idle, made the weakest of the departing Mesozoic Scale beings feel as though the air had thickened to syrup, each step away from her a small relief they were careful not to show. Among THE Originals she was known as THE Mirthful Antiquity, and the name was a warning dressed as a compliment, because nothing about the Source Lands was older or more dangerous than a thing that had survived long enough to find all of it fucking funny.
As she hummed, a small grimoire in her hands buzzed.
It was a slight thing, bound in worn dark leather warm from her grip, and it trembled against her palm the way a struck bell trembles. Her smile did not change as she opened it, the pages whispering, and she read the lines that bloomed across them, simple and cold and absolute.
|Your next target is designated of the highest importance. Proceed with full priority.|
|Designation: Noah Osmont.|
|Power: confirmed to wield a Primordial Intent or higher. Assessment leans higher. A budding True Lifeform, viable as a vessel. Acquisition, not termination, is preferred.|
|Personality: pragmatic. Tyrannical. Composed under pressure, displays no fear, values his own identity above all external pressures. Cannot be cowed. Cannot be rushed. Will convert direct adversity into growth; do not feed him any.|
|Current location: THE Effluvium Sanctum. THE Braneworld Observable Existence. Somewhere unknown in Undefined Gaps.|
|Known weaknesses: Women. Bonds with family.|
|Exploitation guidance: the subject’s tyranny and composure make conventional leverage useless. He cannot be threatened into anything. But a being so committed to his own identity is, paradoxically, deeply moved by those he has folded into that identity. He protects. He is warm toward women he trusts and ferocious toward threats against his family, and both warmth and ferocity are openings where cold pressure is not. Do not approach as an enemy. Approach as something he would choose to keep. Become a thing he wants near him, and the most composed being in existence will open a door he would seal against any army. The bond is the breach.|
THE Mirthful Antiquity read it all, and laughed.
It was a low, delighted laugh, genuinely amused, the laugh of a being who found Existence consistently entertaining.
"Osmont," she said to the empty golden air. "Oh, my dear Master wants to use me like a common whore to get close to this little Osmont. After all these ages. The things I am asked to do..." She turned a page idly, still smiling.
"And yet. A budding True Lifeform, viable as a vessel. That is not a common errand..." She tilted her head, the smile sharpening with interest rather than offense. "Hmm. Okay. Okay, I’ll bite. For something this unique, I’ll even be a whore about it. One does what the work requires, and the work, this time, looks fun."
She rose from the golden mat in a single fluid motion, unfolding to her full graceful height, and looked down at her own body with the frank appraisal of a craftsman inspecting a tool. Her long fair legs. Her slender frame. Her large vibrant eyes, which she could feel the weight of even from the inside.
"So," she murmured, almost to herself, turning her wrist as if trying on a sleeve. "The question is always the same fun question. What identity of mine shall I wear this time?" Her smile widened.
"An Original, ancient and untouchable, to meet him as a peer of the deep lineages? A Sword of Existence, to slip in beside him under THE Queen Regnant’s own arrangements? A Gilded One, to play at the war he’s waging? Or an Infinite Lifeform, to mirror the very thing he fused?" She laughed again, softer. "So many possibilities. So many true things I could be."
And here was the difference between her and poor screaming Olmander on his mountain, the difference between knowing and having.
Her eyes pulsed, and within her pupils turned immensities and terrifying wonders, depth beyond depth, and underneath every mask she might choose to wear, beneath Original and Sword and Gilded and Infinite, her own Identity sat unfathomably, perfectly, seamlessly clear.
She had it.
She had always had it.
That was what made her so very good at being everyone else!