Read Novel Full Chapter 5435: Potential! I
Chapter 5435: Potential! I
As THE Infiniverse finished the grand emergence of her Intent, the whole of her stirred awake to it.
Across the unfathomable reach of her, the countless realms and domains began to buzz, a low excited thrum rolling through trillions of worlds at once, the way a vast body shivers when something deep within it changes. And then a sea of Intent rose and blanketed all of it, THE Egoic Intent of THE Infiniverse wrapping around every realm and fold and current within her, a terrifying foundational presence settling over her own contents like a tide coming in over the whole of an existence. She was awake now, and aware, and everything inside her could feel that the place they lived in had become unfathomable!
Noah felt the warmth of it, the grandeur threading back through his Cause, and he turned to Ruination with a smile.
"Well," he said. "She’s done it. Why don’t we see the formation of your Intent next?"
...!
First THE Infiniverse, and now Ruination. He grew his people the way other beings collected territory, one impossible ascension after another!
|Understood, Master.|
Ruination’s churning weave of Infinity lines held steady, and her gaze did not waver. There was not a shred of doubt anywhere in her. She had watched THE Infiniverse do the thing no Observable Existence had ever done, and she regarded her own turn at the impossible as simply the next task, certain she would meet it the way she met everything.
With her Master’s Quintessence!
---
Far away, in THE Effluvium Sanctum, the obsidian-silver seas rolled slow beneath a lethal sky, and a voice spoke from behind the Dora Shath’yar.
"Hey, girls!"
THE Mirthful Antiquity stood there, having arrived without a ripple, the wild easy smile already on her face, the dense ambient Intent of the Sanctum parting around her as though it knew better than to press on her.
The nine Dora Shath’yar spun, and for an instant their black-hole eyes flared with alarm before recognition set in, and then they drew themselves up with respect, nine Mesozoic Scale Daughters of THE Queen Regnant straightening before an Original of the deep lineages. Only Eir grinned. She floated over at once, bowing with more enthusiasm than form, her bronze frame practically vibrating.
"Ma’am Antiquity!" Eir said. "Oh, perfect timing. I have been denied a fight by every single being I’ve asked so far. Every one. Astrid won’t let me near the New Sword, the Existence-monster left, and my sisters are boring. You’re a bit scary, honestly, more than a bit, but do you have anything special I could struggle against? Anything at all? I want Adversity! I want something big! I’m withering without it..."
Ryaenara laughed, warm and fond, and reached out to pat Eir’s head as though she were a large eager hound.
"Be careful, Little Eir," she said, admonishing and gentle at once. "Be careful, always, about seeking more and more thrills, more and more adversity. It is a fine hunger when you are young and strong. But one day you go looking for a struggle and you meet something utterly unfair instead, something that does not play by the rules you assumed, and by then it is too late to have wanted less." Her vibrant eyes glittered. "Still. I do like playing with you. So. Let me see. Ah, here. Here you go."
She waved one slender hand, and revealed another Gu.
This one hovered above her palm as a single violet eye, lidless and ancient, trailing slow tentacles beneath it and bearing a pair of small dark wings that beat without sound. It looked, like the last one, both newly hatched and unspeakably old, a thing that should not have been able to exist and clearly had for longer than most lineages. The violet of its iris pulsed with a deep cold light, and the air near it carried the faint dry scent of crushed stone and something older underneath.
"This little darling," Ryaenara said, her eyes shining with genuine collector’s pleasure, "is a rare one even among my rarities. A Gu that holds and expresses two Pantheons, extracted whole from two dead Mesozoic Scale beings before their dimensions could collapse with them. It carries them folded inside itself, and it can unfold them at need, two full Pantheonic Dimensions out of one small eye." She turned her wrist, admiring it. "This single creature is worth more than any one Mesozoic Scale being you will ever meet. Most beings own one dimension. This one owns two..."
...!
The Gu woke fully, the great violet eye widening like an ancient horror rousing from sleep, and Eir’s smile sharpened into something hungry. She drifted back, planted herself, and readied her stance.
The eye dilated, and two terrifying Pantheons spilled out of it.
They unfolded into the Sanctum on either side of the little creature, two dead beings’ dimensions blooming back into the world, vast architectures of stolen sovereignty crowding the obsidian seas, their imposed laws crashing against each other and against the lethal ambient Intent of the place. And Eir laughed in pure delight and released her own Pantheon to meet them, her Olympian-grade dimension erupting around her, a Daughter of THE Queen Regnant throwing herself gladly into a two-against-one she had been aching for all day.
WAA!
Ryaenara watched it begin, and laughed lightly, the indulgent laugh of someone watching a favorite pet finally get its toy.
Then she turned, away from the clashing Pantheons, toward the far distance where the deep currents of the Sanctum ran richest. Because there, light years off, a unique Intent pulsed against her senses, slow and heavy and rhythmic, throbbing like the breathing of some vast banked beast, contained and quiet and utterly unlike anything else in the region. Her smile did not change, but her eyes sharpened, all the mirth in them gone suddenly cold and exact.
"And there," she murmured, gazing toward that pulsing distant thing. "Is that our little bundle of mystery? The one I’ve come all this way to protect?"
Astrid, leader of the Dora Shath’yar, inclined her head, her own eyes never leaving the sparring chaos behind them.
"Yes, Ma’am," she said. "That is him. The New Sword, Osmont." A pause, and something genuinely uncertain crossed the Mesozoic woman’s bronze features. "He is...very unique. None of us are quite sure about him."
Ryaenara began to move, drifting away from the nine Daughters and the clashing dimensions, gliding toward the depths of THE Effluvium Sanctum and the slow pulsing Intent that waited at the end of it.
"Mm," she said, and the cold smile widened just slightly as she went. "That’s all right. I like the unique ones best."