Noah looked at the suit and the blade with eyes that were unfathomably bright.
Sir William Arthur’s attention returned to him.
"Those are your preliminary tools," he said. "An armant and a blade, the latter containing THE Exelissomai Source Fragnt which will teach you Exelissomai, since you already possess Persevere. An official Sword of Existence can potentially gain access to other letters of THE Primordial Tongue and eventually, after boundless adversity, even THE Primordial Source itself."
He looked at the suit and blade with the composed assessnt of soone reviewing instrunts they have provided many tis. "When you adorn these officially, they function as your entry credentials into a Source Land designated for testing. Demonstrate Fourth Scale equivalent power and you should be adequate for the trial. Pass the trial and you beco an official Sword of Existence."
His expression held its composed neutrality throughout.
"It may present itself as a grand opportunity," he said.
"It is not experienced as one. It is a thankless position, and many beings will seek to kill you specifically because of what you will represent, since you will also kill countless. Among the many paths existence offers, this is among the hardest. Adversity falls on us more than on others. It is a unique and tricky thing." He straightened for the last ti.
"But a man must stand upright. A man must do his duty."
He looked at the Stilled space around them one final ti.
"I will remain in touch as your sponsor. When you are ready, THE Gilded Ones who did this will be yours to rectify and correct the choices of, however you find best fit." He was quiet for a mont, and when he spoke again, it was like he was reciting a motto!
"Existence unfolds and eons conclude, leaving civilizations that beco monunts, then crumble to mory, and are long forgotten when that breath cos again. In all these eons, THE Primordial Source reigns supre."
HUUM!
He shook his head once.
He stood in the Stilled lower Observable Existence with the obsidian stellar suit unblemished and the sheath at his side carrying its composed readiness.
Then he was gone.
Noah looked at the space where Sir William Arthur had been standing, then at the suit and the blade before him.
He reached out and stored both in his existence with a single motion, the obsidian suit and the blue-obsidian sheathed blade of THE Sovereign Reckoning disappearing into his storage with the ease of objects finding their designated positions.
His entire existence was burning with the impatience of a being who wanted to close his hand around that hilt and find out whether the sheath would open for him, but patience was a capability he had developed across eons of adversity and he applied it now.
There were things to see first.
He took a step and disappeared.
---
Jotunheim received him in its permanent frost.
The Causal Stilling had taken the cold of the realm and made it absolute, the frost no longer a condition of the environnt but a permanent fact of it, the capacity for thawing removed from it entirely. The silver-gold luminescence ran through the frost’s surface in slow pulses, the Acedia Infection having saturated even the geological substrate of the Primordial Realm.
The chaos giants moved through it.
They were still massive, still irregular in the way chaos-born beings were irregular, but the irregularity now expressed itself differently, the vast fras carrying their size without the purpose that had animated them before.
The silver-gold light ran through their bodies in the sa pulsing rhythm as everything else the Stilling had converted, their attention orienting toward the nearest life signature without the cognitive processes that had previously diated between detection and action.
At their center, Abaddon sat.
The massive body of THE Primordial Chaos occupied a position of unintentional throne-like authority in the middle of the frost, seated with the specific gravity of sothing very large at rest, the silver-gold Stilling running through Abaddon’s ancient foundations in its pulses. Whether anything of THE Great Usurper remained within the body was the question Noah needed answered.
The mont he appeared, the chaos giant Dredges oriented toward him simultaneously.
They ca at him in a mass, the chanical purposefulness of the Stilling driving them forward with no assessnt of what they were approaching or what approaching it would produce.
Rivers of Osmontian Absolute Infinity swirled outward from Noah in response, the expressed identity of his Infinity eting the incoming mass and simply declining to be affected by their contact, the river currents pushing outward and smashing them backward with the flat authority of a force that had no particular interest in what it was clearing.
He looked at Abaddon.
"Are you in there? Eckert. Do you still have hold of your existence?"
Abaddon sat.
The silver-gold pulsed through the ancient body in its rhythm. No response erged. The eyes held the flat purposeless quality of full conversion, the body remaining in its seated position not through choice but through the inertia of sothing very large that the Stilling’s imperative hadn’t yet overridden into motion.
Noah looked at him for a mont longer.
Then he sighed and waved his hand.
A raging circle of Osmontian Absolute Infinity closed around Abaddon’s seated form, the multicolored light wrapping around the massive body completely before sealing and vanishing, Abaddon sent to the isolated domain THE Infiniverse had sectioned off alongside whatever remained or didn’t remain of THE Great Usurper within him.
More chaos giant Dredges pressed toward him from three directions.
The Osmontian Absolute Infinity rivers swirled outward and smashed them backward again, the mass of silver-gold infected bodies hitting the frost hard enough to crack it, and Noah took a step and was gone.
---
Helheim was dark, but the silver-gold ran through its obsidian spaces now in the sa pulsing rhythm as everywhere else the Stilling had reached. Noah heard the batle before he saw it.
The massive circular obsidian mass of Erwin moved through Helheim’s lower spaces with the wrong purpose of full conversion, the silver-gold glow running through the information that composed him in deep waves, the tentacles that had once moved with the complex intention of a being engaged with existence now moving with the single imperative the Acedia had replaced that intention with.
THE Primordial Paradox stood between Erwin and the rest of Helheim.
Half the ancient being’s foundations carried the silver-gold of partial infection, the Stilling having found partial purchase in the depth of what he was before the multicolored Infinity Noah had placed within him had engaged with the infection and arrested its progression.
He was fighting both simultaneously, holding the line against Erwin’s mass while his foundations managed the internal infection with the Infinity burning against it from within.
When Noah appeared, THE Primordial Paradox looked at him!
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