Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse

Chapter 5946: A Way Forward

Noah stood in the ruins of the Maze with the last thread of Lygara’s destiny closed in his hand, and he looked at it for a long moment while his own blood dried on his fingers. It was very thin, gold and silver twisted togther, and it was still faintly warm, and he could feel the shape of her inside it, small and quiet and far away. He opened his Dream and drew the thread down into it, carefully, passing it through the endless blue-gold places inside him where nothing could reach it, and he felt it settle there and rest.

From where he stood, everything looked very clear and very far away at the same time. He could see the hand above him and the crumbling Maze and the dark golden-veined sea, and he could also see, under all of it, the long slow pulse of existence moving as it always had, carrying every one of them on it, the hand and the Maze and Lygara’s thread and himself. The moment was terrible, and it was also only a moment, one small part of something so much larger that no single part of it could ever be the whole.

The Primordial Gu of Provenance looked down at him with all of its thousands of eyes, and its voice came from every segment of the hand at once.

"There will be nothing after this," it said. "No revenge, and no destruction of mine, because my Provenance decides what existence will do to me, and it has always decided in my favor. It already senses that I will find the child of calamity eventually, so I have no further need of you."

Its eyes narrowed, and the hand began to close. "You are most likely the thing that brought her back, and so you can face your judgment now. In your next life, not that you will have one, do not do things that you do not need to do."

HUUM!

The hand came down. All of its terrible might came down with it, every Provenance it had ever judged and every beginning it had ever erased, pressing down on the small figure standing in the ruins, and Noah felt his Dreaming Human Origin there begin to break. He did not raise his hands this time, and he did not try to stop it, because he knew what was happening and he knew there was nothing in him here that could stop it.

He was calm, and he found that this surprised him less than he would have expected. Existence was not always happy times with no worries, because existence held hard times as well, losses and griefs and moments where the strongest thing in the room simply decided to close its hand.

He had known that for a long time, and it was all part of existence, the same as the snow and the soil and the warm fruit on his farm.

His Dream collapsed. For the first time in a long time, the part of him that stood in THE Chrysalis came apart, his body and his Dreaming Human Origin breaking under the weight of the hand, and he felt himself go. But because he had given himself so completely to the existence around him, he did not simply end, and he felt his collapsing existence flow outward instead, dispersing into the golden seas and the Fallow-touched ground and the long currents of the Chrysalis, and even as the last of him came apart, he smiled.

---

He could still sense things after that, faintly, through the existence he had sunk into. He felt the Primordial Gu of Provenance hang over the ruins for a long moment after he was gone, and he felt its existence erupt, a vast white wave of Provenance rolling out across the region in every direction and destroying everything it touched. It broke the last walls of the Maze into dust, boiled the dark golden sea, tore the black-gold soil off the broken stone, and scattered the grey light of the Fallow across the sky, and then it turned and went back down its Conduit into the dark.

Noah felt all of it, and none of it troubled him as much as the Primordial Gu wanted it to. It could destroy everything here, but existence would simply take another shape, the same as it always did, and his Dreams were already flowing across this whole region of the Chrysalis, sunk into its ground and its seas and its currents, waiting quietly underneath the destruction. When he could, he would come back and restore it, and existence here would remember him and help him do it.

Waves of understanding moved through him as he drifted, one after another, quiet and very deep. Losing a body was not losing himself, and losing a fight was not losing the dream, and existence did not owe him victory any more than it owed the Primordial Gu anything at all.

Noah let all of it settle inside him, and he closed his eyes, content, and when he opened them again, he was sitting on his farm in the snow, with the hoe across his knees and the small blue-gold sapling beside him.

|Your existence in THE Chrysalis has been destroyed by THE Primordial Gu of Provenance.|

|A significant part of your existence has been lost.|

|Your Dreaming Human Origin there has collapsed.|

|Your Dreams remain dispersed through that region of THE Chrysalis. You gave yourself completely, your very life.|

|THE Maze of Destiny has been destroyed.|

|THE First Gu of Destiny has been collapsed.|

|You hold the last thread of her destiny.|

...!

Above the farm, the sky over the Carcosa lit up again, and the banner of THE Narrative of Kings unfurled across it, burning with light and visible across all of existence. Near the bottom of the ranking, a name slid downward, past one name and then another, and words bloomed beneath it for everyone in existence to read.

|THE Narrative of Kings has shifted.|

|THE Dreaming Human Origin falls from Rank 48 to Rank 50.|

|THE Dreaming Human Origin has lost a significant part of his existence to another King.|

|His prestige has fallen.|

...!

Noah looked up at the banner, and then he shook his head slowly and smiled, because a few hours ago he had scowled at it for raising him, and now it was lowering him, and he cared about one about as much as the other. He sat back on the warm black-gold soil with the snow falling softly around him, and he let the banner say whatevr it wanted. It was only a name sliding up and down on a piece of light, and his farm was right here, and the sapling was beside him, and that was what mattered.

He opened his Dream and brought out the last thread of Lygara’s destiny, and he held it up in front of him, thin and gold and silver in the falling snow. It was still faintly warm, and when he pulled on it, gently, he felt something pull back, very small and very far away, the last trace of her dream still holding on at the other end. What had been taken away could be brought back, because he had done it before with Lifthrasir, and with his Infinite Dreams, with his own dreams, anything was possible.

A setback could be only a setback, or it could be a way forward, and he knew which one he would choose. He would keep going, and he would keep farming, and he would keep giving to existence and dreaming his dream, and he would make it grander than it had ever been. The Primordial Gu could keep its year or months, he thought, and he smiled at the thread in his hand.

His body began to shine. It started in his chest and spread outward, a deep blue-gold and obsidian-gold light pouring out of him across the farm and into the sapling beside him, and the sapling drank it in and grew, its four Branches stretching and thickening, its four flowers opening wider and brighter in the snow. Everything he had lost and everything he had understood in losing it came back into him at once, and the prompts came with it.

HUUUUM!

|Through tremendous adversity, your Tree has grown.|

|Branch of Dreams: Level 2 to Level 3.|

|Branch of Nightmares: Level 2 to Level 3.|

|Branch of Shinjitsu: Level 2 to Level 3.|

|Branch of THE Unstriving Current: Level 2 to Level 3.|

|Shinjitsu Assimilation Rate: 9% to 10%.|

Noah smiled, and it was a sad smile, but a real one. He held Lygara’s thread in both hands and closed his eyes, and he gave to it freely and without asking anything back, pouring his Dreams into it and wrapping it in them and nurturing the last small trace of her that still held on at its end. Slowly, gently, he drew that trace out of the thread and into his Dream, and from his Dream out into the snowy air of his farm.

She came out of him as a Risen Dream, small at first and then larger, a long and sinuous shape of soft gold and silver light, with a beautiful face on a long insect neck and tentacles drifting slowly in the cold air. She was faint, and quiet, and her eyes were closed, and she was not yet everything she had been, but she was here, coiled loosely around the sapling in the falling snow, and when Noah looked at her, one of her tentacles moved very slightly toward him.

His whole existence shone with light as he watched her, and around them both, the existence of his farm and the Carcosa beyond it began to buzz and hum, low and steady, mourning what had been lost and celebrating what had come back, both at once.

Existence could be very hard sometimes, and it could take from a person things they had never meant to give, but none of that was ever a reason to stop living one’s dream.