Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse

Chapter 5941: Not A Lifeform!

THE Primordial Source stretched out in every direction as an endless obsidian sea, black and still and heavy, with no shore and no horizon and no sky above it except more darkness. Its surface did not move unless something moved it, and nothing moved it except the figure standing tall above the water, a titan so large that his shoulders were lost in the dark and his feet rested on the sea without sinking.

That was Vakochev, and far below him, standing on the black water where it held them up, were two small figures who barely reached his ankle.

One of them was Anaximander, slim and dark-haired, with pupils that had turned into two small obsidian singularities and no authority of his own at all. The other was THE Creature, flat and unhurried and silent as always, standing beside his friend with his hands at his sides. Both of them were looking up past Vakochev at the thing that hung in the dark in front of him.

It was a mountain, and it was not really there. It was an illusion that Vakochev had called up out of the Primordial Source, faint and grey and enormous, its peak lost somewhere far above even his head and its roots sinking down through the obsidian sea into a depth that had no bottom. Thin lines ran out from it in every direction, thousands upon thousands of them, branching and branching again into the dark until there were more of them than anyone could count, and at the ends of the lines hung small pale shapes that might have been regions of existence. It was THE Mountain at the Center of Everything!

...!

"Look at it closely," Vakochev said, and his voice moved across the obsidian sea in slow, deep waves that the two small figures felt in their chests.

"Every lifeform that ever learns of this mountain thinks of it as a place. It is not a place. It is the spine of existence, the one thing that holds every region and every Dimension and every place in its proper relation to every other."

He lifted one enormous hand toward the illusion, and the faint lines running out from the mountain brightened one by one.

Then his hand moved, and a great stretch of the illusion lit up gold, vast regions of the mountain’s reach glowing at once.

"For a very long time," he said, "my Scales of Existence covered all of this. They weighed what passed along these roads, and what passed through these regions, and they kept all of it in balance. My Narrative was never a strong one, because all it ever said was that things should be weighed fairly, but it was spread across far too much of existence for far too long, and a weak Narrative spread that wide becomes something no one can stand against. It made me unfathomably powerful, more powerful than I ever meant to be."

The gold across the illusion began to break apart in places, dimming and cracking and going dark in one region after another.

"That drew the ire of many Legacies," Vakochev said, more quietly now. "One by one, and then together, they moved against me in different corners of existence, tearing down my Scales and my existence wherever they could reach it, because none of them wanted to be weighed. And behind all of them, moving in the dark where I could never quite see them, were my true enemies, whose names now sit on the banner of THE Narrative of Kings as if they had always belonged there."

...!

Anaximander listened to all of it with his head tilted, his obsidian pupils following the dark places spreading through the illusion, and THE Creature listened beside him without moving at all. When Vakochev finally fell silent, Anaximander nodded slowly, having followed every word and found it all very reasonable. "Okay," he said. "But I don’t understand what I have to do with any of this? I am...but a simple lifeform, a scholar who is not in anyway involved in any of this. I am thinking of a ridiculous guy who might actually be, but I would have to check with him first..."

Vakochev turned his great head to look down at him. "The Immensity of my Narrative, and everything I once did, is buried now," he said. "Others have laid their own Narratives on top of mine, one after another, until mine is hidden underneath all of them, THE Long Night, THE Narrative of Kings, and many others whose names you would not know. I have been taking back pieces of what I was, slowly, but my enemies did something worse than bury me, because they made existence itself believe that I am something harmful to it."

The obsidian sea stirred around his feet, and the illusion of the mountain flickered. "Now, simply to live, to breathe, to move, or to act at all costs me an effort you cannot imagine, because existence itself pushes back against everything I do," he went on.

"I have been trying to put that right, and those who are truly attuned to existence can help me more than anyone. That is why I brought you....because you, Anaximander, are not a lifeform."

BOOM!

The word struck the obsidian sea, and waves rolled out from it across the Primordial Source for as far as the dark went. Anaximander blinked, and then blinked again, and tilted his head even furthr, because nobody had ever said anything quite like that to him before.

Above him, Vakochev’s titanic form turned fully around to face him, and the whole Primordial Source seethed and buzzed around them, its black surface rising in small trembling points.

"You feel like existence," Vakochev said. "Not a part of existence, but existence itself, small and minor and weak, yet existence all the same. You are a piece of existence that decided, at some point, to be aware of itself and to take a form, and that is why it bends to agree with you when you speak. You are no creature at all, you are something else, and if you truly come to know what you are, a great many doors will open for you."

He lowered his voice, and the sea settled a little. "That is what I saw in you, and that is why I brought you here. Whether I am right or wrong, we will find out, but only if you agree. Do you want to see?"

...!

Anaximander turned and looked at THE Creature with open disbelief, because he had always thought of himself as a scholar, and nothing more. THE Creature looked back at him silently for a long moment, with the same flat and patient expression he always wore, and then he nodded once.

Anaximander frowned deeply and stared down at the black water under his feet, thinking it through slowly and from every side, while the Primordial Source waited around him. Then he raised his head, looked up at the titan towering over him, and nodded.

Vakochev raised both of his hands, and the endless Primordial Source rose with them. The obsidian sea lifted in great waves on every side, wave after wave climbing up into the dark until they stood higher than Vakochev himself, black and glittering and full of a deep, old light that had been sleeping under the surface since before any of them were born.

The three of them were old...and they were also young.

For a moment the waves hung there, surrounding the three of them in a ring of rising darkness, and then they turned all at once toward the small dark-haired figure standing at the titan’s feet.

They crashed down onto Anaximander and poured into him. The Primordial Source flooded into his body and into his existence through his skin and his eyes, more of it than any single lifform should have been able to hold, and his obsidian pupils blazed with light as it filled him. He did not scream, and he did not fall, and THE Creature stood beside him through all of it without stepping back, the black water rushing past him on every side.

Vakochev’s voice rolled out over the rising sea, grand and vast and shaking the dark itself.

"A spark." he said. "A spark is all that any of us ever needs. Persevere through all adversity, and persevere through all doubt, and persevere through everything you do not know. Persevere."

BOOM!