Chapter 737: Path I |
Achilles opened his eyes.
The Pure Primordial Essence was still working through him, still settling into the foundations of THE Primordial Realm of Assimilation and threading the connection to THE Primordial Source deeper into the architecture of his existence.
He could feel it continuing, the integration not yet complete, the changes still unfolding at a pace his foundations dictated rather than one he chose.
He gazed at the obsidian sea around him.
There should have been a trial here. The prompts from the maze had made clear that crossing THE Trial of the Immovable Stone deposited candidates somewhere further assessment awaited, and the quality of this place, the endless dark water and the sense of something watching, all of it communicated that he had arrived at exactly such a place.
But it was quiet.
He needed time anyway. The wonders moving through his existence deserved attention, the Pure Primordial Essence permeating across his foundations carrying implications he had only begun to catalogue, and standing in this still sea processing those implications would have suited him fine if the trial had been content to leave him alone.
His eyes sharpened.
He looked across the obsidian waves and found the thing watching him. A crow, massive beyond the scale of anything that had a right to be called a crow, riding the swells of the dark sea with crimson eyes fixed on him.
He took a step.
Space folded around the motion and he appeared beside the crow instantly, near enough now to feel the full weight of what it carried, near enough to begin whatever the trial was going to demand of him!
He readied himself, the light of THE Assimilation Cause stirring at the edges of his existence in case the assessment turned out to require violence.
Before he could do anything, the crow spoke fast.
"Stop! Stop! You passed the trial!"
BOOM!
The words came out with the particular urgency of something making a decision in real time and committing to it before the alternative could develop. The crow drew itself up and worked visibly to retain its majesty, smoothing its enormous wings and settling its posture into something that suggested authority rather than the alarm that had produced its first words, but the effort to project composure made the underlying truth clearer rather than concealing it.
It did not want to fight him.
"I don’t fucking know why a guy like you was misjudged and brought here, but okay!" Its voice recovered some of its grandness as it talked.
"I will clear you for the trial and vouch for you to become an Attendant! In fact, hey, connections are everything in existence."
The crimson eyes assessed him with the calculation of something deciding that an alliance cost nothing and might prove useful.
"I am Morrigaur. Let me get you cleared and take you where you need to be."
...!
Achilles let the light of THE Assimilation Cause settle back into stillness. He had no particular objection to a path that skipped further conflict, especially when the creature offering it carried power worth keeping on agreeable terms rather than testing prematurely.
Morrigaur closed its obsidian eyes for a moment.
In the next moment, prompts bloomed before Achilles.
|THE Trial of the Obsidian Sea has been waived by the administering authority, Morrigaur, the Crow of Sundered Tides.|
|Candidate assessment: cleared.|
|You have passed the entry requirements for the Attendants of Existence.|
|Welcome, Attendant.|
After the prompts, a dazzling obsidian crystal descended from somewhere above, falling with the unhurried certainty of something that knew exactly where it was going. It shot toward his palm in the final stretch and branded itself there, settling into his skin with a brief flare of cold authority, and when it finished he saw the mark it had left.
Two swords, intersected.
|Branding Applied: The Mark of the Attendant.|
|This mark designates you as an Attendant of Existence, support to THE Swords of Existence. It carries a link to THE Primordial Source, granting you access to the geography, infrastructure, and information networks available to your position.|
|Through this mark, you may perceive sanctioned locations across Cornwall Observable Existence and transit to those for which you hold clearance.|
|The mark grows in access and authority as you prove yourself within the structure.|
The branding released a faint light of Pure Primordial Essence, and as it did, Achilles felt something open within his awareness. Memories that were not quite memories, access that had not existed a moment ago, different points of light becoming suddenly clear in his perception the way landmarks become clear when fog lifts. The geography of Cornwall Observable Existence laid itself out across his mind, not all of it but the parts his clearance permitted, locations resolving from nothing into known things.
Morrigaur watched him absorb it with the satisfaction of a creature whose vouching had taken effect.
"You should be able to sense Edingass and Bangor now."
Its voice had recovered fully into its grand register.
"Bangor is where most Attendants are clustered, and there is a Source Gateway there. Once you are chosen by a Sword of Existence, that gateway takes you to THE Source Lands. Or, if you would rather work in exploration, gathering information across Observable Existences for the Swords, Bangor is where that begins too."
The crimson eyes fixed on him.
"Let us go there right now."
...!
Morrigaur erupted with power.
Spatial light bloomed outward from the massive crow and wrapped around both of them, the obsidian sea folding away as the authority took hold. Achilles felt the movement across space begin, and as it did, the marking on his palm flashed brightly, the two intersected swords pulsing with light as if checking his clearance against the destination, confirming he was permitted to arrive where they were going.
A new existence unfolded around him.
POP!
He arrived in Bangor beside Morrigaur, and the contrast with the still obsidian sea could not have been sharper. They stood in the middle of a bustling place, alive with movement in every direction. Tall trees rose around them with trunks broad enough to house structures within them, their canopies spreading high overhead in layers of deep green that filtered the golden light pouring down from above.
Obsidian-gold towers stood among the trees, their architecture combining the organic and the constructed into something that looked grown and built at the same time, surfaces catching the light of the Observable Force that ran rich through the atmosphere here.
And the lifeforms.
Achilles sensed them everywhere, many of them carrying power that pressed against his awareness with real weight. Beings moved through the streets and across the elevated walkways connecting the towers, some humanoid and some nothing close to it, some walking and some flowing and some occupying space in ways that did not resolve into easy description. Attendants, he understood!
Beings who had passed the same entry he had passed, clustered here in numbers that made the scale of the structure he had just joined considerably clearer than it had been a moment ago.
This was not a small thing he had entered.
Morrigaur turned its massive head toward him, crimson eyes carrying something that had warmed from the earlier wariness into the practical interest of a creature that had decided he was worth knowing.
"Come on. I will show you a few things, and you can decide which path you wish to take."
A small step into a place in Cornwall, and access to a mark that would eventually give him acess to THE Source Lands.
A seemingly small progression of events, but nobody could have predicted the terrifying things they would lead to, not even Achilles himself!