Lord Shadow

Chapter 2010

"Everyone here?" one of them mutters. The word echoes in the minds of everyone.

"House of Rhobos, present"

"Sith, present"

"Qar, here"

"Yara"

"Everyone is present then" The one who started asking was from House Klargen

"Everyone is here? Is it because of the raven?" the other ones nodded.

They all sighed.

"Let us share our minds so that we would get the full picture"

All of the Five Seats in their Star Abodes, opens up their mind and reconstructed the scene from a few hours ago.

Five perspective is being melded into one, five psychic power merges and everything about that moment is reconstructed back and it was like they were back in time toward that moment

Only this time, they viewed it from a higher perspective, like a god overlooking every perspective

…

A few hours ago, the skies of Orvan darken.

All off the sky of Orvan darkens.

And the Five sent a fleet to the skies and at first, they thought it was a cosmic storm.

Adjusting time and space, the planet moved.

Of course, most of the civilization in the world would not move their star system just because a cosmic storm appears but to the Orvan, this is like making themselves phase less and the people inside the planet and inside the star system would not feel any change

They would not even notice it

But the moment they tried to do it, time and space did not move according to their desire.

And then they saw it.

And the Five also saw it from their celestial abodes.

A slow spiral of black cloud swallowing the stars all over the heavens of Orvan.

The sensors failed to define it.

The sky itself trembles.

The clouds moved with intentions.

Those soldiers did not know what they encounter but the Old Ones knew.

They have seen this creature before. And seeing it again, here, in Orvan make them all frowned

Whether this frown is out of dissatisfaction or out of anger or maybe fear, only these five knows.

It was Huginn. At least this is how it is called in some worlds and in some reality. But the Old Ones called this one by its oldest name, different worlds different languages but the meaning is always the same

Thought

A raven of Odin. Most of the time, this whispering small raven is always perched on Odin shoulder

But this time he was unbound…. Thought given cosmic flesh! And it powers is suffocating

The wingspan of this raven stretched across the stars and the horizons, blotting out constellation as though they were mere embers

Each feather was as vast as a continent, layered in shifting shades of obsidian and void, edged with a faint, cold luminescence

And when the Orvan look at these feathers, look at Huginn, their minds could not bear it. Because they hear something

What did they hear?

Thoughts.

All kinds of thoughts.

Jumbled up, warped and full of confusion.

No, no…. the thoughts itself is not confused.

It is because it is too many that the Orvanians could not scramble it in time

It would be like a million people talking to you at the same time.

The noise alone would deafen you but under this barrage of thoughts, millions, trillions, even more, how could you decipher it, and heard it.

And the more they heard it, the more they suffer.

Only the Old Ones could withstand it.

And when they see this from their Star Abode, they close their eyes and said only a word, and the minds of the soldiers in the darkness of space is pacified.

Just by looking at Huginn, their Thoughts would be stimulated.

All kinds of thoughts would enter their minds and all kinds of ideas would suddenly blooms

And each time this raven made even the slightest movement, the space around it seems to hesitate. Bending time and space…. reality itself struggled to keep pace with the magnitude of this presence

This is the reason why the dislocation of time and space before did not work.

The moment this raven appears, time around this star system semes to become like a fixed point of time.

It is temporary of course, but it has the same effect like a fixed point of time

The Old Ones looks at the eyes of this raven.

And with one glance the Old Ones could understand. To the untrained, it would look like the raven eyes are burning with fire.

But those who could see past that burning fire, would see that it burned with "knowing"

Twin spheres of pale, endless light, like collapsed stars filled with thought rather than heat.

When those eyes turned upon the Orvanians, it was not merely a gaze

That eye….is analysing, dissecting, and understanding everything it sees

Their language, their technology, their history, their fears… all unravelled in an instant before him.

Huginn and Munnin, these two ravens of the One Eyed is like the embodiment of their namesake.

When Odin wanted to conquer a world, he would first send his ravens. When they arrived, they would have knowledge of everything the enemy have

Not only that, they also know their thoughts and their intentions. Hence, Odin rarely lost.

The Old Ones could feel the fear of the Orvanians in the fleet. The fear of being understood completely.

Huginn did not flap its wings.

This raven did not need to.

The raven willed himself forward, and the vacuum parted like water before a god.

Around him, fragments of memory, symbols, and half-formed ideas shimmered into existence, ghostly echoes of civilizations it had observed across the Omniverse.

No, not only observed but experienced.

The Orvan have lived longer than even the Vanirs and the Asgardians but this raven is like the embodiment of Thoughts.

And Thoughts existed in some cracks of everything. Time alone could not explain it.

This raven did not come here to attack Orvan.

That would just not make sense.

Odin and Orvanians did not have feud and Odin rarely went out from Asgard

Even more so now that Ragnarök is approaching.

Of course, the Old Ones knows that Odin is probably are doing something right now

There are some things they could see and there are some things they could not see. One thing they knows that Odin movement these days are hard to predict but it must have something to do with that Child of the End.

For something to break his slumber and went out of Asgard, only the Child of the End could make him be able to do that

But now, his ravens are here.

And this is something that the Old Ones did not understand.

If this raven comes to attack, there would be burning stars and burning planets all over the star system of Orvan

However, right now, space dust, empty worlds and dead darkly creatures are orbiting the ravens like it is a planet with rings.

The darkly creatures are of eldritch origins and must have been in the raven way to be killed by it in its journey here.

But why did it come? And then the raven look. Look at them. Even though tens of millions of light years separated them, all of the Five Seats, all of the Old Ones felt like the raven is looking directly at them

And then a voice enters their mind. No, it is not quite accurate to say that it is a voice. It is more of a "meaning"

It is a word that is not a word but when it is spoken and heard, all of the Old Ones understood why the raven came and what it is asking.

And then the raven like I had already finished its job once again moves and in less than a millisecond, disappears from the heavens of Orvan like it was never there in the beginning

For a moment, the fleet does not know what to do. All they could do is just to retreat.

But the Five Seats heard the message and knows what is happening. And they become even more worried

It did not take long before all five of them have the same intentions and thoughts. Convene a grand meeting of the Five.

But this meeting must be a secret.

So, they could not meet at the public council. But a meeting in a secluded and secretive location one of the many hidden places where the Five could meet each other

They also did not need to leave their Star Abodes

These thoughts echoes in their mind of all five of them and today meeting was determined

..

"Odin is asking for help. Right now, he is in the river. Time and space are quite confused right now"

"He asks for help. Wargod is also there" The Old Ones from the Five Houses see no reason why to drag this matter for long

They are already in crisis mode the moment Wargod said things to that Child of the End

Now, even the River Master is appearing and seemingly interfere.

The Old Ones from the Yara house then said

"What do you think the River Master intends to do? What is He thinking? Is He against it? Or is He for it?"

The other four all thought for a moment, their heads are running off the calculations in their minds and then after a while, all four of them sighed

"We don't know" their voices echo in this wide dark room.

..