novelnext Chapter 727: Destruere!
Chapter 727: Destruere!
The Source Lifeform arrived grandly as Achilles felt it through every layer of his transformed foundations simultaneously!
The danger registered before the being resolved visually, his Architect’s Perception and his Neo Gilded Observable Organ and every capability he had accumulated across his existence all producing the same assessment without comparison or qualification.
This exceeded Vireth and the assembled Devonian Paleozoic Scale Sororis Prima and everything else he had encountered since crossing THE Obsidian Span of the Nine Crowns.
Titanic and humanoid, wearing an obsidian stellar suit.
...!
The Source Lifeform’s attention moved across the assembled Legion’s formations with the thorough assessment of something completing a review it had already decided the conclusion of, and when it found the cluster behind Achilles and Taylor’s positions, the assessment paused.
It spoke at length, its voice unfathomably glorious as Achilles felt Taylor get closer to him, as if proximity could save her!
"Existence is not a resource to be exploited simply because one possesses the capability to do so."
HUUM!
His voice boomed across Observable Existence.
"The capacity to act does not constitute a mandate to act. A being who can lift a mountain is not therefore obligated to drop it on ants, and a being who can traverse the architecture of time is not therefore justified in doing so to pursue outcomes that temporal mechanics have already rendered impossible."
"The closed loop of temporal travel is not a theory. It is an observed and documented feature of how existence functions. The past cannot be changed. What occurred has occurred, and the record of its occurrence is woven into the fabric of existence at a depth that no force presently documented can revise. A being who travels backward into time and finds themselves present in a moment they previously were not present in has always been present in that moment. They are discovering their presence, not creating it."
His eyes remained on Vireth and those she had brought here!
"However. A being who travels into the past with the specific intent to forcibly alter outcomes, who brings sufficient power to bear that they begin to pressure the set record rather than simply inhabit it, introduces instabilities into the fabric of existence that compound outward from the point of pressure. Existence does not accommodate revision. When revision is forced upon it, existence begins to unravel from the site of the forcing."
He paused.
"The unraveling of existence is not something I regard with equanimity. The beings responsible for initiating it carry a verdict, and the verdict is death."
It ended simply.
"Are there any questions?"
BOOM!
Vireth did not answer with words.
She rose from contained to blazing in a breath, Fourth Scale power erupting from foundations that had been suppressed during transit and were now fully expressed. Three other Fourth Scale entities rose alongside her from the Legion’s body, their combined authority falling across the Observable Force in the lockdown zone with the weight of multiple simultaneous expressions at that tier!
The Sororis Prima leading this legion moved both hands outward and the Legion responded, billowing seas of Prime Cause authority and Existential Radiation surging around the full formation in an expression that pressed against the lockdown with golden pressure.
Then Vireth called out with a voice that carried the absolute conviction!
"Absolute Superbius Series: GILDED PEACOCK!"
HUUM!
The capability took form in the surrounding space from no single point within it, the collective pride of the assembled formation finding a shape that occupied Gigaparsecs of observable space as it wrapped around him and Taylor!
He looked at it with slight worry as he didn’t comtribute anything to its formation.
Massive and golden, its body composed of condensed Existential Radiation and Infinity and Observable Force and the compound authority of every being who had fed into the expression, its tail spreading across the surrounding space in a fan of golden feathers that carried concentrated pride.
Its eyes burned crimson.
The waves of pride reached the Source Lifeform and moved across him and moved past him.
He remained exactly where he was!
Achilles watched the pride waves find no purchase on those foundations, his Inner Dominion continuing to expand from the aurora while his spores continued their work through the Observable Force cycling into the Legion’s Gilded Ones as he watched all this!
The Source Lifeform reached up with two fingers and straightened his tie.
His other hand closed around the hilt of the blade.
He spoke.
"Destruere."
...!
HUUM!
That word! That letter! That...should be something from THE Primordial Tongue!
Oh!
The draw was one motion. And the attack was aimed towards his direction as Achilles almost felt a sense of fear...but hid existence told him this attack was not meant for him!
So he...Persevered!
...!
From sheath to full extension in a single arc, and from the blade’s edge as it completed that arc, a massive crescent of obsidian liquid erupted, murky and dark and carrying THE Primordial Source in a physical form that existing frameworks had no adequate language for.
The crescent traveled at a speed Achilles registered only as before and after rather than motion, and it hit the peacock’s body and continued past it without slowing.
It carved through the pride waves, through the Existential Radiation, through the collective Superbius authority of every Fourth Scale and Devonian and Silurian expression that had been sustaining the formation, the carving treating all of it as texture rather than force.
The crescent continued outward through the Observable Existence itself, splitting Gigaparsecs of space along its path and sealing the cut in obsidian as it traveled.
OOOH!
The peacock he and Taylor were contained in by association... collapsed.
The golden pride composing its body poured from the cut in cascades, the condensed Superbius authority failing along the cut’s path and the failure spreading until the entire form lost coherence!
Nearby, he was Vireth dropped! The three Fourth Scale entities dropped alongside her. Sororis Prima Elizabeth dropped. The ten Sororis Primas across the formation dropped!
The Devonian and Silurian formations staggered as thousands of obsidian cuts appeared across every being who had fed authority into the expression, the crescent’s passage through their collective investment leaving its record on every existence that had contributed.
Crimson-gold blood poured from the cuts in volumes that did not stop.
Taylor grabbed her own arms and looked at herself and then around at the decimated Legion and then at Achilles beside her, her face cycling through several expressions before landing on one of pure unguarded relief that expressed itself as laughter.
"What the absolute fuck! We’re fine! We’re completely fine! Holy shit!"
Achilles agreed with the assessment while maintaining the external composure of someone who had been expecting this outcome, which he had not.
The Source Lifeform walked toward where Vireth floated amid the crimson-gold blood and the sickly rejection her existence was producing, unhurried, his blade returned to its sheath, and spoke to her.
What followed was brief and complete.
He tapped his hand outward once. Vireth disappeared.
Again. The second Fourth Scale entity disappeared.
Again. The third.
Again. The fourth.
He straightened his jacket.
"Consequences," he said to the space they had occupied, "are simply decisions arriving at their natural destination."
...!
And just like that, Vireth, who had forced him to come to THE Braneworld Observable Existence and to this place...was actually decimated and collapsed by a Source Lifeform!