Rivers could be damd. Rivers could be redirected. Rivers could be convinced through sufficient engineering to flow in directions they had not originally intended.
This was why so many monstrously powerful existences across the full sweep of history had dedicated themselves to controlling the weavings of existence or changing causality itself, believing that sufficient power applied at the correct point could redirect what was coming toward outcos they preferred.
They rarely succeeded.
Because causality was not a river but an ocean, and oceans did not respond to dams by stopping. They responded by finding every available path around the obstruction simultaneously, distributing their montum across a thousand alternative routes until the barrier beca irrelevant to the destination being reached.
The harder one tried to go against an eventuality, the more pressure accumulated behind it, and the quicker that eventuality arrived when the resistance finally gave way.
This was the truth that the most powerful beings in existence had learned and relearned across eons of attempting to bend what would be into what they preferred.
So lessons required the weight of repeated experience before they settled permanently.
---
Achilles found himself in a unique isolated domain where he could not sense anything outside of it.
The space held the quality of sowhere that had been constructed specifically to resist external perception rather than simply existing beyond its reach, the difference between a room with locked doors and a room that had no doors at all from the outside perspective. Rivers of Observable Force floated through the domain in patterns that suggested deliberate arrangent rather than natural flow. Singularities of concentrated authority drifted between them like planets in slow orbit.
The terrifying woman was already here, sitting on a ledge of golden Observable Force with the comfortable ease of soone in a space they had occupied many tis before. She looked at him with crimson-gold eyes that carried the layered quality of perception that had observed the sa mont from multiple temporal angles.
"Are you not going to ask anything about the future?"
Her head tilted slightly with genuine curiosity beneath the question.
"About your fate?"
Achilles looked at her with the calm of soone who had already processed this question before she finished asking it.
"The present will not change regardless of what I learn about the future, because the future is never set."
His voice carried certainty rather than philosophy.
"I know this because I have played with ti before. So just tell what all of this entails."
Yes.
He had played with the weavings of ti to bring many mbers of his family back from deaths that should have been permanent, threading through causality with techniques that had cost him considerably to develop and execute. He understood the chanics of temporal and quantum interference from the inside rather than rely in theory.
But what this woman was doing was sothing far more complex than anything he had attempted, and for now he would only listen. The future was not set. What mattered was the present decision and the information required to make it correctly.
The woman smiled with brightness that the isolated domain sohow made more concentrated rather than diluting it.
"I am Vireth."
She introduced herself.
"And this point in ti where we currently exist, we will go back a bit further from here before we are done, as that would be as far back as I can reach with my power. Ti is not infinitely accessible even for those of us who work within it."
She settled more comfortably on her ledge of Observable Force with the ease of soone transitioning from introduction to the substance of what had brought her here.
"As for THE Osmontian, that monster has many nas. He should be a Bounded Lifeform just like you, originating from a lower Observable Existence, which is perhaps part of what makes him so difficult for the conventional hierarchy to process and address."
Her crimson-gold eyes held a quality that sharpened around the edges of what she was describing.
"He appeared in a region and proceeded to devour Sororis Primas and Gilded Ones like they were absolutely nothing, consuming beings of that magnitude with an ease that defied every frawork anyone had for understanding what a Bounded Lifeform could accomplish. And it was there that he began stripping Infinity from Gilded Ones."
She paused with the weight of soone naming sothing they had spent considerable ti dreading.
"THE Primus Apeiron. That was his first appearance. That was the start. And that is where we have to go back."
...!
Achilles processed this information with calculating internal thoughts that moved faster than his expression suggested.
He had not expected the target to be the monstrous creature that even Mansa Nguna’s house had been cautious enough to raise in a formal gathering of tens of thousands of Ordovician Scale Gilded Ones. The being from her mories that the Sororis Prima had presented on an illusory screen with the specific warning that they wanted it kept isolated within one Observable Existence.
That warning suddenly felt considerably more personal than it had when filtered through soone else’s mory.
Vireth continued without pausing for his internal processing to complete.
"He is budding at this mont. That is the only word that fits."
Her voice carried the cadence of soone who had studied what they were describing with the thoroughness of dedicated obsession.
"He is not yet what he will beco. The roots are still shallow. The foundations are still finding their ground. We can see the shape of what approaches, but it has not fully arrived yet."
She leaned forward slightly with the urgency of soone arriving at the core of everything they had co to say.
"This is the window. Once it closes, once he has had the ti and the adversity and the resources he is clearly so extraordinarily capable of converting into power, the window will not open again. He needs to be addressed now, while the roots are shallow, while the foundations are still settling."
Her expression carried absolute conviction.
"I will help you get your power where it needs to be, and we will join a few others in this assault. When it cos to dealing with a monster of this nature, we need ti and planning and determination. Determination!"
She laughed.
And within the laughter, Achilles saw sothing that the easy brightness of her smile had been containing throughout their entire interaction. A terrifying sense of rage and anger and deep hatred for THE Osmontian that had nothing casual about it, grief converted into fury!
The laughter sounded mad at its edges.
And Achilles understood that the madness was not instability.
It was purpose!
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