Noah took all of it in.
He processed the information in layers!
First layer: beings from the future. This was the most significant piece because it implied his existence’s trajectory produced consequences severe enough that entities in that future considered temporal travel a proportionate response.
Second... they’d kidnapped anomalies from other Observable Existences to build a fucking existential squad. Specialized tools for a specialized target. Third...at least two of their tools, Taylor and this Adrastia, had independently decided they didn’t want to participate and were approaching him with defection as their opening offer.
He looked at Taylor.
She was a ruler of an Observable Existence. A Bounded Lifeform who’d done what he was doing from a different direction, climbing past the limitations imposed by her starting classification and arriving at a position that shouldn’t have been available to her. This alone made her more interesting than many.
Beings who ruled Observable Existences without Gilded engineering behind them didn’t exist by accident. She had the ability to back it up, and the fact that Pillow Talk couldn’t pull anything from her suggested the capability had substance behind it.
"So what’s the deal you want?" he said. "And your anomalous factor. What is it exactly?"
Taylor smiled and straightened up.
"Simple. Adrastia and I don’t want fuck all to do with this, and we would like that known. Our safety and eventual return to our respective Observable Existences would be ideal. Without these ti-traveling fuckers getting vindictive and killing our families." She held up a finger. "As for my ability..."
The smile turned into sothing that was pride underneath the casual exterior.
"I am so fucking astonishing that Infinity and THE Primordial Source all talk to . I don’t have access to the letters of THE Primordial Tongue or THE Source itself, and I dabble a little in Infinity, but I talk, and existence loves to talk back. They kidnapped for this. To make sure they could track and kill all your bodies, wherever they are."
Her eyes moved in their rapid calculating passes.
"Existence told that sohow, you have another body up there in THE Braneworld Observable Existence?" She tilted her head. "I didn’t believe that at first. With how powerful THE Gilded Ones are, they wouldn’t leave a beast like you roaming around freely up there, right?"
She paused.
"As for down here, I can pull information about many parts of you. Most of you is clustered in a place filled with paradoxes where I can get very little info. What is that, what is it called..." She squinted. "THE Infiniverse? I was barely able to pull that na. What is-"
HUUM!
The pressure around Noah’s form changed. He didn’t do it deliberately. His Infinity and his Source responded to the na being spoken by an outside entity, and what they produced was a shift in the ambient weight of the space that made the multicolored seas around them go still.
Taylor felt the change.
She blinked. Her body drifted backward without her feet moving, a slow float away from his head that she wasn’t generating consciously. Her eyes stopped their calculating movent and held very still on his face.
"Woah." She raised both hands. "I didn’t an anything by that, big guy. I have, um, been told that I can talk too much. If I am, just stop . I had a Relictus just leave halfway through my talking without even realizing it, so I understand!" Her hands stayed up. "But rember. I co in peace!"
"So." She lowered her hands one at a ti. "What are we doing here, monster friend? Beast friend? Anomaly friend?"
She tried each one and discarded each one. "You know what, I’ll stick to Osmontian. What shall we do about the squad of assassins trying to fuck you up, and how can we extricate and Adrastia from this? I’d rather be back ho right now not dealing with any of this shit."
...!
Noah’s eyes flashed.
What to do.
He knew what he wanted to do. He loved adversity. He’d built an entire engineering frawork around the principle that adversity was the chanism of progression, and he’d been living that principle across every battle since his arrival in THE Braneworld. He’d sought it out. He’d initiated it!
He’d declared war on Gilded Ones specifically to produce the challenge and risk his advancent required.
And right now, he wanted a break from it.
Not because he was tired. Not because the adversity had exceeded his capacity. Because he’d just gained Persevere at zero cost and the compound elevation was stacking every second, and what that ant was that every second of peace was a second of growth that didn’t require a fight to produce!
The Primordial Tongue letter was doing the work. He didn’t need to supplent it with combat adversity right now. He needed ti.
A few days. Just a few days of the Persevere stacking without interruption!
Or a few months. If he did sothing he’d never done before and simply let ti pass. Observable Existence wouldn’t end in a few months, right?
Wars would still be there when he returned to them. Adversity was a permanent condition. It didn’t spoil. It didn’t expire. It waited!
And if he took that ti. If he stacked Persevere every second for months. If THE Infiniverse completed her transformation and THE Infinite Cause reached its full ergence. If his Galdr Source continued its developnt in THE Source Lands alongside all of it.
By the ti he ca back to war...
"Hmm."
The smile started small.
It spread. It kept spreading, past the point where smiles normally stopped, the Primus Apeiron’s features pulling into sothing that carried delight and nace in equal asure.
His eyes narrowed into bright slits of crystalline blue above the widening grin, and the multicolored flas burning through his form responded to whatever he was thinking by burning hotter.
The surrounding existence trembled.
Taylor shivered!
She floated another foot backward. Her eyes, which had been moving constantly since her arrival, went very still.
"Bro." She looked at the trembling space around them. "This is why I wanted nothing to do with you. Because why the fuck is existence trembling now?"
She looked at him and then at the space and then at him again. "Hey, what did you just think to make the surrounding existence tremble? Fuck!"
...!
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