Read Novel Full Chapter 5903: A Broken Piece!
Chapter 5903: A Broken Piece!
Noah watched the second branch to its very end.
Then he watched the third, the fourth, and the fifth.
|Branch 2: You erase THE Verdant Regard’s identity and keep her Immensity as an empty weapon.|
|THE SLEEPLESS FIEND speaks to her for three minutes.|
|In the fourth minute, he notices that she has stopped being afraid of him.|
|Branch 2 has ended badly.|
|Branch 3: You stay inside THE Keepers of Existence and play her as herself, for days.|
|You are careful. You are nearly perfect.|
|On the ninth day, He tilts his head as if he realized something.|
|Branch 3 has ended badly.|
|Branch 4: You flee the Keepers at once, taking her with you.|
|THE SLEEPLESS FIEND follows the trail of green light through the snow.|
|Branch 4 has ended badly.|
|Branch 5: You let her live a small part of the dream she always wanted.|
|Outcome: acceptable.|
|You keep what you have gained.|
|Your Dreaming Human Origin holds. Assimilation Rate: unchanged.|
...!
The glass closed.
An instant passed in the real orchard. Snow fell. THE SLEEPLESS FIEND stood beneath the frozen plum tree, smiling down at the woman he thought he knew.
Noah’s weavings pulsed, once, deep inside her.
And THE Verdant Regard turned to face him!
She rose slowly from the foot of the tree, one hand still pressed to her wounded chest, and looked up at the Fiend with her green eyes. Her voice came out quiet at first, and then steadier, as if she were saying something she had rehersed a thousand times in the dark.
"Do you know," she said, "that I am always living in fear of you?"
The Fiend’s smile stayed exactly where it was.
"Every shred of my Immensity dreads the next moment it will have to stand in front of you," she went on. "When you came to the Legacy of THE Acharya and talked to me as if you were convincing me to leave them, to betray them, I played along as if I had a choice. But you and I both know it was only you giving an order."
The snow fell between them.
"And since then, nothing has gone right. Not in any way. My daughter is still severed, her path torn and going nowhere. I have lost and lost and lost. And you only seem to grow grander."
Her voice dropped. "Behind my fear, there is such a tremendous hatred for you that I have never once been able to bring myself to say it to your face."
The Fiend looked at her for a long moment.
Then his smile widened, slow and brutal.
"Then why, oh why," he said softly, "did you think it was wise to speak up now? Why not stay in your little shell?"
THE Verdant Regard lifted her chin.
"I want to be true to my dream," she said. "Even if I die for it. I will leave this place, and I will not turn back."
She held his gaze. "Will you collapse me for this decision? Or will you release me?"
...!
The orchard went very still.
Deep inside her, Noah let one thing slip through on purpose. Her free arm began to tremble, very slightly, at her side. It was a small tremor, the kind that comes when someone is holding back fear with everything they have and failing at the edges. Her fingers curled and uncurled once.
The Fiend’s eyes flicked down to that trembling hand.
And his smile went away!
It simply stopped, all at once, wiped away completely, and what replaced it was a face so utterly bored, so completely empty of interest, that it was worse than any anger.
"Across existence," he said, "I have many pieces."
He glanced away from her, out over the frozen orchard, as if she were already only half worth looking at.
"In many Legacies, in many places, set on many boards. Existence is not fair to most of us. Some are born with golden spoons in their mouths, with talents that fall into their laps, with fathers and mothers and Legacies that carry them up to heights they never earned. And then there are those like me, who had to claw for every scrap and scheme for every inch, with everything we were on the line every single time."
"Those like me do not get to rely on luck. We cultivate pieces instead. We find them small, we raise them carefully, and we use them across existence for as long as they are useful. We feed them, shape them, set them where they will matter, and when one finally breaks, we do not mourn it. A board has no room for grief. It only has room for the next move. I have a great many such pieces."
His eyes came back to her. "And you are a broken one. You are no longer fun to play with. Go. Do whatever you like. Your use, the use of the entirety of your existence, can be considered over and done."
...!
THE Verdant Regard trembled.
Her shoulders shook, and her lips pressed together, and for a moment she looked like a woman about to cry in front of the one thing she feared most in all of existence.
Then she gave him a light nod.
Her existence began to flake!
It started at her fingertips, small green flakes lifting off her like leaves in a breeze, then her arms, her shoulders, her long dark hair, all of her coming loose and turning into soft verdant streams of light that drifted up into the falling snow. The frozen orchard around her flickered green as she went, every tree leaning toward her one last time.
Deep inside her Immensity, tucked away in the last place the Fiend would think to look, Minerva went with her, small and unconcious and safe. All Noah needed now was time, enough time to make the exit before a being of Unfathomable Immensity changed his mind.
And just before she was gone entirely, THE Verdant Regard looked back at the Fiend one last time.
"Existence is vast and full of terrors," she said. "Ages pass. Even grand civilizations and great Immensities become monuments, and in time those monuments crumble into memories, and those memories are forgotten in the boundless rivers of dreams and time."
Her voice was soft and very clear. "None of us can say... exactly who will remain supreme."
HUUM!
With those words, she disappeared!
The green streams of light drifted away into the snow, and the snow carried them down, down toward the roots, and then there was nothing left beneath the plum tree but a dent in the frost where she had been sitting.
THE SLEEPLESS FIEND stood alone in the frozen orchard.
He tilted his head.
For the briefest moment, something crossed his face. A flash of confusion, quick and small, the look of someone who has heard a faint sound in another room and is still trying to name it. His ever-open eyes narrowed at the empty frost.
Then he shook his head, as if dismissing a passing thought, and stepped back through the air, and was gone.