While a glorious Tree of Unity blood in the Transcendent Temporal Folds, elsewhere in existence, darker seeds were being planted with equal care.
In the Transcendent Paradoxical Folds, space itself existed as suggestion rather than certainty.
Here, reality folded in on itself repeatedly, creating passages that led everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. Obsidian mirrors lined these impossible corridors, but they showed possibilities of what might be, what could have been, what would never be allowed to exist.
Through this maze of potential walked Schrodinger…or rather, another body of his, for beings of his nature rarely confined themselves to singular existence.
This version moved with the sa certainty as the one attending the Concordat, his beggar's clothes sohow remaining consistently ragged despite passing through spaces that should have transford or destroyed them entirely.
He entered a vast domain where the obsidian mirrors ford cathedral walls, their surfaces angling inward to focus on sothing that made even paradox itself nervous about existing in the sa space.
At the center of this impossible cathedral lay the Corpse of an Early Creature.
It sprawled across dinsions with the casual disregard for space that only sothing of its magnitude could achieve!
Even in death, or what passed for death at such levels, it radiated power that made the mirrors crack and reform continuously, unable to fully contain or reflect what lay before them.
Floating before the corpse's massive chest was Duke Diviticus, her form wreathed in tendrils of deathly obsidian radiance that flowed between her and the Early Creature in a display of morbid ritual!
The energy pulsed with sickening regularity, like a heartbeat that had forgotten it was supposed to stop after death. She hung there in concentration so complete that the rest of existence might as well have ceased to matter.
Which was why Schrodinger's sudden appearance sent shock cascading through her entire being as she rose up thr mont she saw him!
She had thought this domain was hers alone.
At her level of power, she should have sensed anyone approaching long before they arrived.
The paradoxical mirrors themselves should have warned her, shown her the possibility of intrusion before it beca reality.
Yet Schrodinger stood there as if he had always been there, as if the space recognized him more than it recognized her, as if he were coming ho rather than invading.
Duke Diviticus turned slowly, the tendrils of deathly energy continuing their work even as her attention split.
Hesitation colored her movents…not quite fear but the careful consideration of prey that had just realized it might not be the predator in this scenario.
"Did... did sir have sothing to discuss with ?" she asked, her voice carrying forced calm that fooled neither of them.
The wariness she felt toward Schrodinger went beyond simple caution.
The mystery surrounding him, the power he wielded without displaying, the way he seed to know things that knowledge itself hadn't discovered yet…all of it combined into a presence that made even Duke-level existence want to step carefully.
Schrodinger smiled at her question, but his gaze never found her. Instead, he looked past her, through her, as if she were rely an inconvenient obstruction between him and what actually mattered.
His eyes fixed on the massive corpse with recognition that suggested old acquaintance rather than first eting.
"I need for it to use its power to thin The Veil even more," he said, still not looking at Diviticus despite ostensibly addressing the situation.
"Specifically in certain locations that I'll designate."
HUUM!
The casual nature of the request…as if he were asking soone to adjust the temperature in a room, made it even more terrifying.
Diviticus blinked, confusion mixing with her wariness. "I don't believe I have the power to actively do that yet. I'm still learning the feedback between myself and the corpse. The connection is complex, and-"
"I wasn't talking to you."
WAA!
Schrodinger's interruption ca with the patient certainty of soone correcting a child's misunderstanding. He shook his head, that disturbing smile never wavering.
"No, you don't know how to do it yet. But this fellow here knows exactly how. After all, he closed a massive tear when you first woke him up, didn't he?"
The words landed like physical blows. Diviticus felt shock cascade through her being, confusion tangling with sudden, terrible understanding.
Why would Schrodinger be talking to the corpse? She was the one controlling it. She was the master here, the one who had claid this power, who had spent hours establishing dominion over-
Behind her, sothing changed.
She couldn't see it, focused as she was on Schrodinger.
But if she had turned, if she had looked at what she thought was her puppet, she would have witnessed sothing that would have shattered her understanding of their relationship entirely.
The massive eyes of the Corpse of the Early Creature, which had been staring blankly across the vast distances of paradox with the empty gaze of true death, suddenly gained sharp light.
Not the chanical response of sothing being controlled, but genuine cognizance…awareness that had been there all along, hiding, waiting, watching.
And in those terrible eyes, as they focused on Schrodinger with perfect clarity, there was sothing even more frightening than awareness.
There was amusent.
Diviticus, still facing Schrodinger, began to respond to his impossible suggestion when he raised his hand with casual dismissal.
Light erupted from him instantaneously, paradox given form and purpose. The speed of it transcended speed itself, arriving before it departed, completing before it began.
Diviticus didn't even sense it.
The obsidian-gold light wrapped around her figure like silk made from contradiction, putting her in a paradoxical state where she was simultaneously trying to respond and not trying to respond
Her mouth was open and closed. Her thoughts were forming and dissolved. She existed in the space between states, frozen not in ti but in possibility itself!
HUUM!
With a single gesture, Schrodinger had suspended a Duke-level existence whose complexity and purity should have made such casual control impossible.
Yet there she hung, wrapped in a cocoon of paradox, aware and unaware, present and absent.
"Now," Schrodinger said, nodding toward the corpse with satisfaction, "we shall have no interruptions between the puppets in this whole ordeal."
He floated forward, his ragged form sohow gaining dignity through motion, until he hovered before the massive head of the Early Creature.
"So I ask of you…I need you to open significantly more tears in the Transcendent Origin Folds. As an Early Creature, especially one so thoroughly wrapped in the weavings of death, you are one of the few who can contribute aningfully to loosening The Veil."
…!
The silence that followed should have been absolute. Corpses, after all, weren't known for their conversational skills.
But then the corpse's eyes moved…not the vacant drift of dead flesh but deliberate, focused movent. They fixed on the frozen form of Diviticus with contempt that transcended death.
"Puny thing," the corpse said, its voice carrying the weight of mountains learning to speak. "You have actually gone ahead and frozen the little thing that thought it was my master."
The words erged not from the throat…what need did the dead have for vocal cords?
They ca from existence itself being forced to acknowledge that this thing wanted to communicate!
The paradoxical mirrors cracked further, unable to reconcile a corpse that spoke with their understanding of what death ant.
If Schrodinger was surprised by the corpse speaking, he showed no sign. Instead, he waited with the patience of soone who had expected exactly this response, who had perhaps orchestrated events specifically to reach this mont.
The corpse's attention returned to him, and its expression…insofar as sothing that massive could have expressions, shifted into sothing that might have been respect mixed with curiosity.
"Little thing, are you not scared at all, standing before like this? As if you knew everything?"
…!
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