Achilles moved through weavings of existence.
THE Watcher’s authority carried him across distances that should have required lots of ti to traverse, spatial fabric parting before him like water around a diving blade. Colors he could not na streaked past his consciousness. Sensations he could not describe pressed against his existence. The journey lasted monts and eternities simultaneously.
Then he appeared within The Existential Lattice.
In the domain Lamashtu was in.
The scene before him was horror given form.
Bodies of Absolutes surrounded the ritual circle in positions of collapsed worship. They were drained of all their power and blood, their obsidian garnts hanging loose on fras that had been reduced to husks. Their chests gaped open where they had torn out their own Hearts of Civilization, wounds that would never heal because there was nothing left to heal.
Each of their eyes held despair and shock and pain.
They looked toward Lamashtu even in death, gazes frozen in the mont of their betrayal. Their expressions asked questions they would never receive answers to. Why did you do this to us? Why use us like this? We served you. We followed you into imprisonnt and out again. We fought for your vision and bled for your ambitions.
Why?
But they never got an answer.
Achilles looked over to see Lamashtu at the center of the burning circle.
Every Heart of Civilization spun around him in orbit that blazed with authority stolen from loyal followers. Every Corrupted Growth converged upon his ritual, geotric wrongness adding its nature to the conflagration he had constructed. Obsidian flas climbed toward heights piercing through dinsions, carrying his offerings toward sothing in the Unobservable that had begun to stir.
"Please."
His voice rose with the flas.
"Please."
The Hearts of Civilization burned brighter.
"Please...?"
Lamashtu frowned as his chanting faltered. He turned toward the new entrant, burning obsidian eyes finding Achilles standing at the edge of his ritual domain. He blinked with confusion that seed almost comical on features radiating Second Scale authority.
"You? You should be bound and locked in a distant corner of this Lattice."
His voice pressed against reality with force that would have crushed Achilles before.
"How did you escape your bindings? How did you arrive here so quickly?"
Achilles did not answer.
He was unfathomably serious as he looked upon THE Prisoner and understood what he was about to do.
He knew the Pulse, THE Primordial Severance, would be costing him a trendous amount. He knew that his existence may be irreparably damaged, that all his depth and imnsity may drop back to Surface Depth if not below. He did not have the qualifications to cast it. He was not at THE Second Scale. He had not cultivated the capacity to channel forces ant for beings who perceived more than one percent of existence.
Doing it regardless had a truly heavy cost.
But for the chance to truly take down Lamashtu. For the opportunity to end a Second Scale existence before it completed whatever horror it was summoning. For the possibility of preventing the ergence of sothing that would terrify a Singular Cognizance who had watched existence since before THE First Cause.
The cost was acceptable.
So without any more hesitation in his heart, Achilles began to move.
HUUM!
His hands traced patterns in the air that felt ancient beyond asure. The movents were srizing, somatic gestures that looked like a dance choreographed by grief itself. His fingers curved and extended in configurations that resonated with forces predating differentiation. His arms swept through space in arcs that emulated the swirling of blue and gold particles seeking union that would never co.
It was the dance of despair of Primordial Architects that would never be.
It was THE Primordial Severance.
As he moved his hands, words erged from his throat that he had never learned but sohow knew.
"From the union that failed, I call."
His voice carried weight that pressed against the ritual flas.
"From the children never born, I draw."
The Hearts of Civilization flickered in their orbit.
"Differentiation rembers its loneliness. Undifferentiation mourns its isolation. Where they should have rged, emptiness remains. Where Architects should have risen, only silence endures."
His hands completed another configuration.
"I speak with the voice of THE Primordial Cause. I move with the grief of potential unrealized. I sever what should not have been joined. I unmake what complexity has wrought."
White-gold light began gathering around his dancing fingers.
"By the mory of failure, by the weight of despair, by the eternal mourning of a Cause that exhausted itself for children who never ca..."
His purple-gold eyes blazed with brilliance that matched the light building around him.
"I enact THE PRIMORDIAL SEVERANCE!"
Lamashtu saw this as his obsidian eyes opened wide in utter incredulity.
He rembered this sensation. The power gathering around Achilles was sothing he had witnessed from extrely powerful Second Scale beings. Entities who had cultivated for eons to grasp even fragnts of what this First Scale creature was sohow channeling. Pulses that required foundations he knew Achilles did not possess.
Impossible!
This was fucking impossible!
His survival instincts kicked in an instant too late.
He paused the ritual, his terrifying body releasing an obsidian sea that erupted outward with authority reclaid from THE Proterozoic Scale, THE Second Scale!
The darkness surged toward Achilles with speed that should have been unavoidable, with force that should have crushed anything below THE Second Scale into oblivion.
But oh.
A Pulse was completed.
At this mont, Achilles’s body seed like it was drying up. His fair skin pulled tight against bones that suddenly protruded. His purple-gold hair lost its luster, becoming brittle and gray. His transford physique withered into sothing decrepit and ancient, vitality draining away as paynt for channeling forces he had no right to channel.
His existence felt faint and weak.
His gaze lost all their brilliance.
This occurred on all his bodies. The one here facing Lamashtu. The one bound in distant regions of The Existential Lattice. Every other one. His Inner Dominion began to shrink rapidly!
Every aspect of his existence paid the heavy cost simultaneously, foundations crumbling as he gave everything to complete what he had started.
But at this ti.
A blinding white-gold light blood from his decrepit hands.
Its brilliance erased the obsidian sea blooming from Lamashtu as if that Second Scale authority was nothing more than shadow before dawn. The light expanded outward with force that transcended power levels, with authority that ca from the fundantal nature of existence itself!
It covered absolutely everything.
THE PRIMORDIAL SEVERANCE!
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