Through sacrifice. He had simply survived through sacrifice as it was not his power that saved him.
The visage of the Mad Early Creature flashed in his mind’s eye...those crimson suns that served as eyes, that tribal figure wrapped in conceptual hides.
If that thing still existed sowhere in the current era, when Noah beca strong enough...
He would hunt it. Not for glory or advancent, but for the one who sacrificed!
But for now, he was far too feeble.
The gap between his current power and what would be needed was asured in epochs.
He grasped the Goad tighter, the Rearing Stick of the Early Creature providing a sense of safety that might have been illusory but was necessary nonetheless. The simple stick humd with recognition of where they were, when they were.
Noah finally looked around properly, his body continuing to draw in the atmospheric authority of the Earliest Folds.
His complexity and purity increased with each breath, each heartbeat adding to his accumulated power. The environnt revealed itself gradually, and what he saw made his Existence freeze.
"Fuck ..."
HUUM!
The curse escaped before he could stop it, the word hanging in air that had witnessed the birth of profanity itself.
He stood in an obsidian region that stretched beyond perception. The ground beneath his feet was black glass that reflected nothing, as if light itself was too afraid to touch it. Viscous rivers of sothing that might have been liquid paradox flowed in patterns that hurt to follow, their contents simultaneously existing and not existing.
But it was what he saw in the distance that truly stole his breath.
Inevitabilities.
Fucking Inevitabilities!
But not the writhing, tentacled monstrosities he had encountered before. These were different. Ancient. Original.
So looked like massive slumbering bipedal beasts made of wriggling tentacles, but the tentacles were composed of contradictions given form.
Others appeared as massive humanoid creatures whose very existence challenged the concept of shape...they were human and not human, beast and not beast, existing in states that predated the separation between categories.
All of them... were slumbering. Their massive forms rose like mountains of impossibility, each breath they took in sleep causing reality to question itself.
Noah almost cursed the First Farr. Why had his random teleportation sent him here of all places?
The mont he made any significant movent, the mont he disturbed their slumber, these Original Inevitabilities would locate him and he would experience a death that might unmake his very conception.
He had to-...!
"What a foul mouth you have. The little kids are currently in deep slumber, so you don’t have to worry, Outsider."
BOOM!
The voice that suddenly spoke behind him was terrifyingly sweet, like honey poured over sharpened steel.
Noah’s entire being seized as he hadn’t sensed anything!
His enhanced perception, his Early Creature nature, none of it had warned him of approach.
No prompts either from the Weaver of Existence, Atlas, or Shore!
He turned with careful control, each movent deliberate and non-threatening.
And behind him was...
A woman?
A woman!
The woman who stood there defied every assumption about what beauty could be. Her skin was fair in a way that suggested she had never known sunlight. Her hair was darkness itself given form, flowing in waves that had no end. But it was her dress that truly commanded attention...silky black fabric that didn’t just cover her form but extended across the entire obsidian region, as if she wore the landscape itself.
Noah’s existence buzzed with warnings. This was sothing that shouldn’t be observed directly, like staring into the concept of ending before endings had been defined.
His weavings moved toward the ntal trigger that would cut short his traversal of the Earliest Folds. He could leave. Should leave. Imdiately!
But before he could activate the return, he forced himself to speak with stern caution that barely masked his preparation to flee.
"Who... are you?"
A stupid question. And he knew it was stupid, but sotis, one had to act stupid to survive a bit longer!
She smiled, and that simple expression contained depths that could drown civilizations.
"Of course....I am an Inevitability."
"..."
The words were delivered with the casual certainty of soone stating that water was wet, that fire burned, that existence existed.
Yet Noah instinctively moved backward, his body reacting before his Existence!
The woman watched his retreat with amusent that danced in eyes he now noticed were wrong.
Her pupils weren’t single points but layers...multiple folds of space-ti collapsed into where eyes should be, showing depths that led to everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.
"It seems you fear ," she observed, her voice carrying playful reproach, "and also don’t, Outsider. You arrive in my ho unannounced, and you act like I am the terrifying monstrosity? You are the intruder here."
...!
Noah grasped his stick tighter, the Goad’s presence helping calm his racing thoughts as much as anything could in this situation.
"I apologize for trespassing," he managed, his voice steadier than he felt. "As for the fear..."
He paused, choosing his words with care that suggested he understood he was balanced on the edge of an blade.
"As far as I know, Inevitabilities are creatures that devour endlessly. Beings that seek Everything. So naturally, I feared."
The woman tilted her head with a tease that would have been charming if not for how reality tilted with her, maintaining her as the center of existence regardless of angle.
"But... I don’t want your Everything, though?"
She looked at the pulsing masses of slumbering Inevitabilities surrounding them, her expression growing fond in the way one might look at sleeping children.
"Well, I guess these little ones would want to devour you endlessly, but you seem to have a misunderstanding about Inevitabilities." Her attention returned to him, those layered-fold eyes containing invitation and threat in equal asure. "Do you have ti for a story, Outsider?"
WAA!
Noah’s mind raced through calculations of risk and opportunity. Internally, he queried his Atlas, asking how quickly he would be returned to his current ti if he decided to leave early.
|Early Traversal Return Speed: Instantaneous. Warning- When facing beings of sufficient power, even instants can be stretched into eons|
|Current entity threat level...Best not to think about it. Hope for the best|
...!
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