Chapter 280, 3/3

Chapter 280, 3/3

The walls were gold. Pillars held up a sky. A hoard of treasure floated on an ocean of Red that was made of chains and lightning. Erick was among that hoard. He was a spot of Black, chained to one of the pillars. Somehow the pillar was connected to Nothanganathor, providing him with mana. Over there was a spot of Blue. Over there was a small garden. All of those powers were chained to pillars. Every pillar held a power; a universal Mark.

There were countless pillars.

Rafts of this or that floated on the Red Chain ocean, each of them holding a treasure of power. Some of the rafts floated below the surface. Some of the rafts floated on a surface that held above Erick, forming the sky. This Sign of Power was ocean and ocean surfaces all the way up, and down.

There was too much of nothing to see, and so Erick ignored it.

- - - -

Erick spent ten thousand years in that hoard, and the hoard grew like an ocean with tides.

Erick watched the treasure build.

He had seen the pattern before there was a pattern.

The hoard of Universal Marks simply grew, for they were usable without being used. Other things were not so chained. Sometimes a thing, like a mirror or bowl or spear or otherwise, would appear on a raft and then leave; gathered and then used. Sometimes a thing would stick around for a while. Buildings floating on islands stayed the longest, but they came and went as well.

The Marks never left; they only piled up.

For a good thousand years, or however-long, there was a really nice temple of water, or something like that, hanging out in the depths of the Red-chain sea, but then the temple vanished. Used, Erick imagined.

And then the real items started to appear. The ones that mattered for what was to come.

They were golden orbs, wrapped in Red, and they floated upon the Red Chain ocean like eggs. They were not eggs at all.

Erick recognized them as Node Network interchanges, though they were certainlynot Ericks Node Network interchanges, and Nothanganathor did not call them that. But that is what they were. First, there was one, and it was tiny. A second one appeared and it was massive. Different variations occurred, and then came standardization; the vast process by which that which works gets repeated, over and over again.

Millions upon millions of standard-order interchanges came and went, like a flow of water. Nothanganathor made them, or picked them up from elsewhere, but considering no one else knew that he had done the Sundering Erick assumed that Nothanganathor had made them himself. Maybe he had had help to make them, but then he had killed those helpers. Erick did not know.

And then one day Nothanganathor appeared, like a worm in the blood, and he organized the hoard.

The rafts with their treasures went down to another layer of the oceans surfaces.

The interchanges came up to Ericks level, and soon, he held, tied to his pillar, above and among an ocean of golden eggs. Still though, Erick saw things that were not eggs. Nothanganathor was not done collecting treasure.

The vast, vast majority of the hoard belonged to those orbs. The Sundering nodes.

Tied to his pillar in the ocean Erick couldnt see everything, but he saw a lot. He recognized that large, purple, Jupiter-sized arrow, as the arrow that Nothanganathor had used against him in the last battle; the one that had simply appeared in Ericks chest, before his [Animadversion] had reflected it. That thing was locked behind several failsafes. Erick watched Nothanganathor come back to the Red Chain ocean a few times to renew those failsafes several times over the centuries. That purple arrow remained as one of his largest weapons. It radiated something like Death, but worse. Pure Sundering? Perhaps, but in a more malicious sort of way

Suddenly, the hoard started to thin.

The Sundering nodes went out like a river of purpose.

This was the seeding, then. The preparation for the Su

A person popped into the Red Chain Ocean, already dying but not finishing that death. Red Chains grabbed that person and locked them down, layering Red around them so deep and thick it turned to crystal, and the chains dragged that crystal into the depths.

Many people started to appear in the Red Chain ocean.

Wherever a golden node blinked out of existence, a person came back.

This, then, was Nothanganathor drawing people into his Sign of Power and replacing them with a Red facsimile? Yes. That is exactly what this was. This was face stealing at the height of the skill. This was how Nothanganathor would ruin any cosmology he ever wanted to fight, for he would not fight. He would replace people with perfect copies and those copies would fight for him, or maybe they would just be themselves, and then Nothanganathor could just use them as targeting systems for a Sundering.

Yes.

That is how he had done it.

The final piece of a horrible puzzle that Erick never wanted to figure out, he had discovered.

Every single person on Fenrir was a Red copy too, werent they.

Even if Erick and everyone won, Nothanganathor would simply Erase them all with a Sundering effect.

But that was in the future.

This was the past.

Nothanganathor thought he was the cause of Veirds survival, because it was all part of some great plan of his. But. No. Erick had been the one to claim that seed of strength, in whatever way it could be claimed.

It was almost time to see that seed bloom.

Erick did not try to move again, to undo even more of Nothanganathors Grand Evil, for the chains around him were tight, and getting tighter. The Darkness had probably helped Erick slip free of his chains to facilitate his undercutting, but that crazed assistance was done for the moment.

The Moment was yet to come.

- - - -

Now.

Right now.

This, then, was the Sundering.

Erick knew it was happening before it happened.

Tangled in chains tied to a pillar hanging above the Red Chain ocean, inside Nothanganathors Sign of Power, Erick witnessed the ocean flow away, all the way away. The bedrock of the Sign of Power was exposed for the first time. Bodies and trinkets lay scattered upon the ocean floor like beached whales and evacuated tide pools.

Nothanganathor curled in the center of it all, a massive white leviathan, wrapped around a bright pearl that infinitely spun inward and outward at the same time. It was the Sign of Power that he had stolen from Margleknot, and it was the center of this ritual, though the seeds had been planted long ago. Nothanganathor used his face whiskers to direct mana flows around the pearl, to pull and push at infinity.

Erick looked up, and saw Nothanganathor looking down.

Erick looked down, and saw Nothanganathor studying the Sign of Power, directing it to work how he wanted it to work. And then Erick looked further down, into the Sign of Power, and he saw himself hanging on a pillar far below.

The Sign of Power contained an infinity, in truth, and now that infinity was being used for fel purposes.

Nothanganathor spoke to his Sign of Power, For Ara.

The infinite horizon boiled.

The floodgates opened.

Everything that had left came rushing back in a tsunami of Primal Lightning, red as the blood of billions. The ocean screamed with souls and Darkness and every Element of every color, all of it drowning in Red, Red, Red.

And then the oceans swirled.

The oceans diverted, each power to its place in the layers of this infinite Sign of Power, each slice of this personal Layer filling with organized power.

Nothanganathor kept the slice of this Layer with his Marks of Power separated and central to the ritual. He saw everything rush by, though. He directed his power perfectly.

Erick watched, chained to his pillar, as the Red Chain ocean grabbed each dead person, killing them further if they needed it and ripping them into their constituent parts. Most everyone was dead, and those that survived were dead soon enough. They were just souls right now, and only a few of those souls gave any trouble at all, and not that much. The Red tore at them like a blender.

Souls went that way.

Bodies went that way.

And the Dark Marks within every single person flowed toward Erick.

The Dark inundated him.

Erick accepted it all.

He accepted the pain.

He accepted the memories.

Erick Became the maddened Dark. He Became the raging, fighting, tearing, touching, knowing, questioning, remembering, feeling...

Loving, gentle Dark.

He

Became

Simply

Xoat.