novelraw Chapter 681: The Dance of Despair!
Chapter 681: The Dance of Despair!
Achilles moved through weavings of existence.
THE Watcher’s authority carried him across distances that should have required lots of time to traverse, spatial fabric parting before him like water around a diving blade. Colors he could not name streaked past his consciousness. Sensations he could not describe pressed against his existence. The journey lasted moments and eternities simultaneously.
Then he appeared within The Existential Lattice.
In the domain Lamashtu was in.
The scene before him was horror given form.
Bodies of Absolutes surrounded the ritual circle in positions of collapsed worship. They were drained of all their power and blood, their obsidian garments hanging loose on frames that had been reduced to husks. Their chests gaped open where they had torn out their own Hearts of Civilization, wounds that would never heal because there was nothing left to heal.
Each of their eyes held despair and shock and pain.
They looked toward Lamashtu even in death, gazes frozen in the moment of their betrayal. Their expressions asked questions they would never receive answers to. Why did you do this to us? Why use us like this? We served you. We followed you into imprisonment and out again. We fought for your vision and bled for your ambitions.
Why?
But they never got an answer.
Achilles looked over to see Lamashtu at the center of the burning circle.
Every Heart of Civilization spun around him in orbit that blazed with authority stolen from loyal followers. Every Corrupted Growth converged upon his ritual, geometric wrongness adding its nature to the conflagration he had constructed. Obsidian flames climbed toward heights piercing through dimensions, carrying his offerings toward something in the Unobservable that had begun to stir.
"Please."
His voice rose with the flames.
"Please."
The Hearts of Civilization burned brighter.
"Please...?"
Lamashtu frowned as his chanting faltered. He turned toward the new entrant, burning obsidian eyes finding Achilles standing at the edge of his ritual domain. He blinked with confusion that seemed almost comical on features radiating Second Scale authority.
"You? You should be bound and locked in a distant corner of this Lattice."
His voice pressed against reality with force that would have crushed Achilles before.
"How did you escape your bindings? How did you arrive here so quickly?"
Achilles did not answer.
He was unfathomably serious as he looked upon THE Prisoner and understood what he was about to do.
He knew the Pulse, THE Primordial Severance, would be costing him a tremendous amount. He knew that his existence may be irreparably damaged, that all his depth and immensity may drop back to Surface Depth if not below. He did not have the qualifications to cast it. He was not at THE Second Scale. He had not cultivated the capacity to channel forces meant for beings who perceived more than one percent of existence.
Doing it regardless had a truly heavy cost.
But for the chance to truly take down Lamashtu. For the opportunity to end a Second Scale existence before it completed whatever horror it was summoning. For the possibility of preventing the emergence of something that would terrify a Singular Cognizance who had watched existence since before THE First Cause.
The cost was acceptable.
So without any more hesitation in his heart, Achilles began to move.
HUUM!
His hands traced patterns in the air that felt ancient beyond measure. The movements were mesmerizing, somatic gestures that looked like a dance choreographed by grief itself. His fingers curved and extended in configurations that resonated with forces predating differentiation. His arms swept through space in arcs that emulated the swirling of blue and gold particles seeking union that would never come.
It was the dance of despair of Primordial Architects that would never be.
It was THE Primordial Severance.
As he moved his hands, words emerged from his throat that he had never learned but somehow knew.
"From the union that failed, I call."
His voice carried weight that pressed against the ritual flames.
"From the children never born, I draw."
The Hearts of Civilization flickered in their orbit.
"Differentiation remembers its loneliness. Undifferentiation mourns its isolation. Where they should have merged, emptiness remains. Where Architects should have risen, only silence endures."
His hands completed another configuration.
"I speak with the voice of THE Primordial Cause. I move with the grief of potential unrealized. I sever what should not have been joined. I unmake what complexity has wrought."
White-gold light began gathering around his dancing fingers.
"By the memory of failure, by the weight of despair, by the eternal mourning of a Cause that exhausted itself for children who never came..."
His purple-gold eyes blazed with brilliance that matched the light building around him.
"I enact THE PRIMORDIAL SEVERANCE!"
Lamashtu saw this as his obsidian eyes opened wide in utter incredulity.
He remembered this sensation. The power gathering around Achilles was something he had witnessed from extremely powerful Second Scale beings. Entities who had cultivated for eons to grasp even fragments of what this First Scale creature was somehow channeling. Pulses that required foundations he knew Achilles did not possess.
Impossible!
This was fucking impossible!
His survival instincts kicked in an instant too late.
He paused the ritual, his terrifying body releasing an obsidian sea that erupted outward with authority reclaimed from THE Proterozoic Scale, THE Second Scale!
The darkness surged toward Achilles with speed that should have been unavoidable, with force that should have crushed anything below THE Second Scale into oblivion.
But oh.
A Pulse was completed.
At this moment, Achilles’s body seemed like it was drying up. His fair skin pulled tight against bones that suddenly protruded. His purple-gold hair lost its luster, becoming brittle and gray. His transformed physique withered into something decrepit and ancient, vitality draining away as payment for channeling forces he had no right to channel.
His existence felt faint and weak.
His gaze lost all their brilliance.
This occurred on all his bodies. The one here facing Lamashtu. The one bound in distant regions of The Existential Lattice. Every other one. His Inner Dominion began to shrink rapidly!
Every aspect of his existence paid the heavy cost simultaneously, foundations crumbling as he gave everything to complete what he had started.
But at this time.
A blinding white-gold light bloomed from his decrepit hands.
Its brilliance erased the obsidian sea blooming from Lamashtu as if that Second Scale authority was nothing more than shadow before dawn. The light expanded outward with force that transcended power levels, with authority that came from the fundamental nature of existence itself!
It covered absolutely everything.
THE PRIMORDIAL SEVERANCE!