He was doing too many things simultaneously, and he was doing all of them well, and he found...well, he found neither of these facts surprising.
This was the nature of what he had beco. Not a single being moving through a single context, but a distributed existence operating across multiple domains at once, each body carrying enough of him to act with full presence while the broader awareness connected them into a coherent whole.
The battle with THE Creature and Calypso continued in THE Early Veiled Shore, the impacts booming across the domain in a rhythm that had beco the background condition of THE Infiniverse’s current existence.
The Pri Exelissomai reinforcent waves descended on their schedule. The threshold continued its approach.
He was also watching the Gilded Ones.
This was the thing that occupied the most vigilant portion of his broader awareness, the thread he kept returning to between all other considerations.
They had deployed the Ealdor-class Existential Acedia Ordnances against the lower Observable Existence with the calm efficiency of beings administering a solution to a problem, and they would co down eventually to assess the results of their solution.
They would want confirmation that the outco matched the intended outco. They would want to see the Existential Acedia Dredges in place and the Causal Stilling holding and everything organized according to their design.
He was waiting for this with the specific patience of soone who had already decided what they were going to do with the opportunity when it arrived.
In the anti, he had another body in the isolated domain within THE Infiniverse.
---
The isolated domain was small by THE Infiniverse’s standards, a contained space separated from the main substrate with clean edges and deliberate simplicity, its floor carrying the sa golden warmth as THE Early Veiled Shore because that was the material he had used to construct it.
The booming exchanges of the Arms Race could be heard even here, arriving through the substrate as a rhythmic percussion.
He had been refining both figures of THE Great Usurper and Alexander within it for hours, his Osmontian Absolute Infinity running through their foundations with the steady thoroughness of a process that didn’t announce its incrents but produced them regardless.
THE Great Usurper blinked.
The body of Abaddon, which had been seated in the contained space with the stillness of a being in deep internal process, moved. The eyes that had been flat with the silver-gold of full conversion focused, the cognizance returning to them in the way that cognizance returned to sothing that had never fully left but had been redirected entirely inward.
He smiled.
"Sorry I couldn’t reply back then." THE Great Usurper’s voice ca out with a warm devilish quality.
"I could hear you. But I couldn’t reply because my entire existence had to be focused on the weavings of the Existential Acedia Ordnances and the Existential Acedia Ego Authority they held."
He laughed, and the laugh held an edge that it hadn’t held before.
"These Gilded Fuckers built a chanism to control every single existence they nuked with these weapons. To manage that, there had to be a channel between them and the authority they utilized. Every single Dredge they affected has no cognizance, nothing but obedience through this channel."
He paused, and the pause carried the weight of a being who had found sothing extraordinary inside a catastrophe.
"But if there is soone like who can remain idle with his existence, retaining a trace of cognizance, when paired with Unity..."
He laughed again, madder this ti.
"Haha. Haha!"
Noah’s eyes were shining.
Alexander had opened his eyes nearby and was watching with the expression of soone erging from a deep internal place to find an unexpected developnt had occurred while they were gone.
"What did you manage to do?" Noah asked.
THE Great Usurper’s brutal evil smile stretched wide.
"The link travels up to the entity who designed these weapons. An Ealdor Gilded One, among others. He spread the authority down to 81 Fourth Scale Acedia Gilded Ones, who then passed it down to 729 Third Scale Acedia Gilded Ones."
He leaned forward slightly.
"The ones who would be managing this place right now are a few dozen Third Scale Acedia Gilded Ones and so Fourth Scale. And through this connection that they expect absolutely nothing from the Dredges..."
His eyes burned with the warmth of a being who had found the gap in a system and had been quietly filling it.
"...I have been slowly spreading my Unity across these dozens of Third Scale Gilded Ones first. I had to be careful. Suprely careful! These are powerful existences. But if I remain silent enough, if I remain deadly enough..."
The smile widened beyond what smiles were designed to hold.
"My existence is already surging as I spread into multiple Gilded Ones, and if I can use these sa connections to reach a Fourth Scale one..."
He shook his head with the specific delight of a being who had looked at an apocalyptic event and found an opportunity inside it.
"There is no need to cure , Big Guy. Unity will take care of everything. I do not need to be cured. I can embrace this and the Acedia who control it. Leave the Acedia side of Gilded Ones to . All of them! Haha, all of them! I will bring them to their knees. They...will know Unity!"
BOOM!
The Great Usurper laughed madly!
...!
Noah smiled alongside him.
The possibilities were significant. An apocalyptic weapon designed to control entire Observable Existences through a hierarchical channel, now carrying THE Great Usurper’s Unity spreading upward through that channel toward the beings managing it.
The design of the weapon had beco the vector for sothing the designers had not accounted for.
This was what happened when beings deployed tools of absolute control without accounting for what might exist inside what they were controlling!
As he thought of all this...
Then he looked at Alexander.
His smile faded.
Alexander was solemn.
Solemn as when one had been affected by things that had gone past their surface and reached the deeper architecture of who they were.
THE Great Usurper had not wavered. The apocalyptic event had arrived and THE Great Usurper had imdiately found the gap within it and begun filling it, because that was what THE Great Usurper’s Way was and the event had not threatened his Way.
But not him.
Not...Alexander.
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