The Crucible pulsed.
And then it shifted.
The Infiniverse, floating high above the battlefield, finally let go of restraint.
|You wish to withstand a Primarch, Master?| she whispered, her voice like golden frost.
|Then...witness the weight of Dinsions.|
HUUM!
The ring of Frequencies behind her shattered into filants, each strand extending into curved arcs, webbing outward into a lattice of impossible angles. Existence bent.
The Infiniverse Crucible changed.
The sky ignited.
HUMMMMM!
One layer descended...over everything and everyone.
The Dinsional Lattice of Continuity.
It fell like a do of green-gold light, locking all beings into fixed tilines. Every movent, every breath was tracked across past, present, and possible futures.
Past...present...and possible futures!
Those caught within it… began to fracture.
Their bodies acted before they intended to move. Their True Sources unraveled before casting.
Then another layer unfolded right after as after a green settled over everything, a heavy violet light ca!
Entropy.
It washed over the whole Crucible.
Everything aged.
Weapons rusted mid-swing. Existence turned to ash. Thought itself corroded.
Harmonized Sourcebound Icons cried out in confusion, withering, then being revived monts later by the pulsing lotus of Continuity above.
And then, Dreams.
The Lattice bathed the Crucible in shimring sandy gold mist. The minds of Monads and Icons were hijacked, made to live entire lifetis in seconds, so as beasts, so as stars, so as ash drifting through a broken Wheel.
One after another!
The Infiniverse was relentless!
Then ca the Lattices of...
Manadynamics, pulsing with electric-blue storm lines that overloaded all casting.
Avalon, layering serenity so pure it induced collapse for those unworthy. Relativity, stretching ti differentials- one second for so beca years for others.
Prana, suffusing the Crucible with life that could not be tad. Helios, igniting suns in the Existence of the weak. Quantum, multiplying all actions across infinite variables until the weaker minds bled from everything. Gravitation, dragging down bodies like falling stars. Polarity, reversing the pull of True Sources, causing abilities to implode within.
Layer...after layer of dinsions fell.
All of them, together, ford a full Lattice.
A unified web of complexity, death, and clarity.
Entities across the Crucible scread.
They died.
Revived by the blooming green of Continuity, only to die again. And again.
Each ti, they returned with greater Complexity. Purity refined. Eyes brighter. More brilliant.
But the pain… the pain never changed.
It was real.
It was ruinous.
And in the eye of the storm, Noah stood.
He had not moved.
His blue-gold glow pulsed faintly. The crown above his head shimred with spinning wheels, each layered with impossibility.
The Perpetual Infinitum Override activated fully.
Each layer of the Lattices tried to rewrite him.
Each failed.
Continuity tried to chain him to the past, his Lineage rewrote it into a present where he ruled.
Entropy tried to rot him, his Complexity refined the rot into growth.
Dreams tried to overwhelm his psyche, he Dread back.
And his Dreams were glorious.
Magisterial!
Quintessential!
His Dream...was Infinite!
Avalon tried to soothe him, he responded with sovereign serenity.
Relativity bent around him.
Polarity reversed him, and then he reversed Polarity.
He was wrapped in compression of wonder. In the purity of his compressed Lineage.
Not yet a Primarch.
But, sothing just as terrifying.
Above, the Infiniverse faltered slightly.
She could not break him.
Ruination hurled another fragnt of her Ruinous Wheel, its breaking cry filling the Crucible.
Noah caught it.
With one hand.
The Crucible quaked.
The battle reached its peak!
Noah. The Infiniverse. Ruination.
None could gain ground.
None could be struck down.
And everywhere else?
The Crucible burned.
Entities died and revived, again and again.
They were thrilled.
They scread.
They sobbed.
They evolved.
And in the heart of it all, Noah smiled.
Because this…
This was glorious ascension.
Glorious evolution!
And he hadn't even begun to get serious. His Living Wheel with 9 True Sources had not spun! Apart from the Infinity and the Singed...other True Sources had been Amalgamated and beco Living True Sources as he had not utilized Paradox Genesis on them!
He was taking it a step at a ti.
If Infiniverse was even more Complex and Pure, maybe her Lattices would lock him in perpetual prisons.
They could even lock other Average Primarchs right now.
If Noah t Vaethrava, the Withering Sealroot again… he might just be able to fight toe to toe against them.
But to kill a Primarch…
Not yet.
He needed more.
More!
So he bellowed out.
"CO!"
HUUM!
As Noah let loose.
Within the Infiniverse Crucible…death was constant to many others.
But not aningless.
For most, the agony of burning beneath solar singularities and collapsing dinsional lattices was unbearable. Again and again, they were unmade. And again and again, Continuity resurrected them.
Yet for Adelaide, the First Wife of Osmont, crowned as the First Queen of the Infiniverse, it was different.
Her weavings still shattered. Her body still disintegrated. But every ti it happened… she felt it.
A soft touch. A shielding wave.
His True Sources cradled her collapse. Wrapped around the fibers of her unraveling self.
Akin to how a father might catch a falling child with both arms and a quiet promise.
So did Noah.
Even while waging battle against a near-Primarch-tier and a true Primarch Entity. Even while enduring lattices of Continuity, Entropy, Dreams, and Ruin.
He still embraced her.
As she reford again, lotus of green-light blooming underfoot, her blue-braided hair whipping in the mana-choked wind, Adelaide looked to the skies where blue-gold and crimson fury collided.
Where her husband stood.
And she smiled.
"I t him in a tiny, small Beast World," she whispered to no one, her voice thick with love. "And now…"
She couldn't even finish her words.
BOOM!
A lattice of Quantum folded over this space.
Ti fractured, inverted, then restitched itself. Adelaide exploded. Her flesh scattered into runes of light.
And then...
Revived.
Athena erged beside her this ti. Reborn in a shimr of silver brilliance.
Barbatos arrived next, smiling with a cracked fang and unbothered by her regenerating body, the weavings of a Necromancer exploding around her.
Adelaide wiped existence-dust from her brow. "Do you know," she asked between breaths, "who the luckiest creatures in existence are?"
Barbatos rolled her eyes dramatically nearby, even as half her leg regenerated. "Yes, yes. It's us. We're the luckiest beings in all of Existence."
Athena chuckled softly, her eyes still trained on the battle above.
Because no matter how many tis they died...
They died for him.
And every ti, he held them through it and made them even more complex. Especially them!
BOOM!
The battle above only intensified.
Infiniverse's lattices flared like wonders casting nets of causality.
Ruination's crimson-gold Wheel cracked the havens, each break releasing screams that bent Existence.
And Noah, still stood.
Still defied.
A figure crowned in paracausal fire, clad in lineage and purpose.
They, the Queens, the companions, the witnesses of his rise since the earliest days...
They were proud.
And they would follow him to the end of all things!
User Comments
0 comments from readers