Far across the corners of Observable Existence, what was previously unearthed and locked away did not remain this way any longer.
Muspelheim!
A glorious and unfathomable place!
At this mont, in a region of the glorious Muspelheim, a voice chirped up in the center of a terrifying storm of power.
"Esteed Whisperer, Surtra... will we be okay?"
The voice stemd from a THE Surface Depth humanoid entity who was actually a massive flaming giant, his body shining with stellar obsidian flas that burned without consuming, radiating heat that would have vaporized lesser beings simply by proximity. He was enormous by any standard, towering hundreds of ters tall, and yet he spoke with the uncertainty of a junior asking a senior if the storm would pass.
He spoke towards the one known as THE Esteed Whisperer, Surtra.
She was another Muspeli Giant, but where he was rely impressive, she was transcendent. Her form burned with incandescent stellar obsidian flas that seed to contain entire folds within their depths, each flicker revealing glimpses of phenona that had no business existing within a single entity’s aura.
Her hair was dark as the void between stars, flowing and shifting as if moved by solar winds, each strand occasionally catching fire with brilliant golden light before settling back into darkness. Her eyes burned with obsidian flas of The First Tongue itself, and when she turned her gaze upon sothing, it was less like being looked at and more like being read.
Waves of Logos and Philologies surrounded her form, complex linguistic constructions that orbited her existence like planetary bodies around a sun. The air of a Fundantal Depth of Absolute Sovereignty radiated around her with such density that space itself seed to bend slightly in her presence.
She stood at the center of a flaming golden pillar, one of hundreds that rose from this ancient citadel like the fingers of so buried giant reaching toward the sky. Each pillar burned with its own unique frequency of fla, and atop each one stood Muspeli Giants of varying power and stature, all of them oriented toward the center of this domain where Surtra maintained her vigil.
The citadel itself was a marvel of primordial architecture. The hundreds of golden flaming pillars surrounded a radiant temple at the center, a structure of impossible geotry that seed to fold in on itself while simultaneously expanding outward. Within that temple, visible even from this distance, an object pulsed with ecstatic power. A Fragnt. A piece of sothing so fundantal that its re presence had shaped this entire region of Muspelheim across eons.
The Fragnt of The Axiom of Differentiated Tongue.
And yet at this mont, surrounding this entire domain and the thousands of Muspeli Giants standing atop different golden flaming pillars, were tens of thousands of Spiritual Abominations.
Living Spirits.
Spirits who followed THE Living Spirit.
Oh!
Shockingly, at this ti, THE Esteed Whisperer looked far ahead as at the forefront of armies containing a few dozen of THE Surface Depth entities, a few THE Interdiate Depth entities, and two THE Fundantal Depth of Absolute Sovereignty entities stood arrayed against them. So of these entities looked like massive wormlike creatures of pure spiritual essence, others resembled spiders woven from crystallized souls, and still others took the form of banshees whose screams could shatter the foundations of reality itself.
And at the head of them all stood an entity that seed to be half a step towards THE Absolute Depth.
THE Living Spirit.
THE Living Spirit looked like a being burning with pure white-gray light, his humanoid form not fully visible beneath the radiance that emanated from his existence. At this ti, his imnse Depth and Sovereignty was actually bombarding to swallow this entire domain in the form of a massive white-gray fog that billowed from all around, pressing inward with the patience of an ocean wearing down a cliff.
And yet.
Flaming seas of obsidian waves of The First Tongue stopped them.
The fog pressed and pushed and probed, but it could not advance. It could not penetrate. It could not overwhelm the defense that Surtra had constructed around this sacred place.
Waves of The First Tongue that held the unfathomable qualities of sothing as simple as sand.
At THE Fundantal Depth, THE Esteed Whisperer had actually been holding back THE Living Spirit themselves and their forces since they arrived here around an hour after THE Fallout started. And they had faced continuous assault from an entity half a step from Absolute, and she had not yielded a single inch of ground.
And she knew it was not just here.
She could feel chaos spreading in the Weavings of The First Tongue ever since that event more than an hour ago. Across Muspelheim, another one or two entities at the caliber of this one had arrived, breaching into the Primordial Realm through thods she did not understand.
And without asking any questions, they moved to attack. They tried to secure the Fragnt of The Axiom of Differentiated Tongue that the Muspeli had guarded for eons.
And yet.
They could not make any headway so far.
Being the Muspeli Protector of this Fla Domain, THE Esteed Whisperer managed to keep a half-step Absolute Depth entity, two Fundantal Depth entities, and multiple other THEs from entering. The forces on her side were objectively weaker. A few dozen THE Surface Depth and Interdiate Depth Muspeli, and only one other Fundantal Depth Muspeli apart from herself.
By any reasonable calculation, they should have been overwheld within minutes.
The only reason she was able to hold was her unique connection to The First Tongue, and how she utilized it.
Her Way was called The Dissipating Shores of Infinite Whispers.
It was a Way built entirely around the principles of sand as when The First Tongue differentiated, she was born in endless sand.
When THE Living Spirit’s authority struck her defensive Logos, the force did not et resistance in the conventional sense. Instead, it t countless points of linguistic contact, millions of interlocking Phones that rubbed and vibrated and shifted against each other, converting the incoming power into less harmful forms. The kinetic authority of an attack didn’t disappear. It transford. It dissipated. It spread across millions of tiny interactions until what had been a devastating assault beca nothing more than warmth absorbed harmlessly into her Philologies.
Her Logos possessed Linguistic Energy Absorption at a fundantal level.
When struck, her constructions dilated and expanded, spreading impact pressure in all directions and resisting continuous penetration. The imnse friction between layered Phones created significant drag, rapidly slowing any authority that tried to force its way through. At the speeds that THE Living Spirit attacked, her defenses didn’t have ti to move out of the way, forcing them to act like a dense, solid-like fluid of pure linguistic power that couldn’t be easily displaced.
And most terrifyingly of all, her Way was self-healing.
Blast through one layer of her defense, and the surrounding Logos flowed in to fill the gap. Shatter a Philology, and the fragnts reford into new configurations instantly. She didn’t crack. She didn’t break. She simply absorbed and reford and waited for the next impact!
This was why a Fundantal Depth entity could hold back a half-step Absolute!
Not through matching power. Not through superior force. But through a Way that understood sothing most entities never considered. From sand!
Sotis the most profound power ca not from striking harder, but from making strikes aningless.
At this mont, the stern gaze of Surtra burned with obsidian flas of The First Tongue as she watched THE Living Spirit’s forces press uselessly against her shores of dissipating authority. Her expression was unreadable, but her eyes held sothing that might have been exhaustion. Or perhaps sothing else entirely.
She whispered to herself, her voice lost beneath the roar of colliding authorities.
"We have sensed your claim. We have sensed your coming after waiting for eons."
Her flas flickered.
"Yet... why have you not co? Why have you not co?"
...!
Her words were forlorn. Pained even. They had all been waiting for so long. Across eons of isolation in this sealed realm, they had felt the stirring of The First Tongue beyond their borders. They had sensed when soone laid claim to what rightfully connected to their inheritance. They had waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Where was the one who had laid the claim? Why were they not here to protect them when enemies ca knocking at their door to strip their very inheritance?
...!
As she had such thoughts, as her heart ached with the weight of eons of anticipation eting the crushing reality of abandonnt...
BOOM!
A single Gigaparsec away, a blinding blue-gold light pierced across the endless skies and thundered down, instantly shooting across Muspelheim and striking the flaming lands of fire as a massive blue-gold monolith stretching out towards the horizon manifested!
It was so heavy and filled with extrely pure authority of The First Tongue that all eyes were forced to lock onto it.
THE Living Spirit, Surtra, and all others nearby.
They couldn’t look away from the brilliant blue-gold monolith that brimd with Primus Mana!
The assault paused. The white-gray fog hesitated in its advance. Even THE Living Spirit’s attention shifted from the domain they had been attacking to this new arrival, this impossible construction of linguistic authority that had simply appeared in Muspelheim as if it had always belonged there.
And at such a mont, Surtra began to feel her heart pound.
Because even while she sensed such pure Weavings of The First Tongue from that Monolith, even while she recognized the familiar structure of Logos and the resonance of genuine Phones...
Why did it seem like there were letters she could not recognize?
...!
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