Noah was done giving THE Riven any more room to talk, to threaten, to offer, to do anything at all. He clapped his hands, once, and the whole of the area blazed alight with his identity.
Everything beca his. The fragnts of the shattered record, the swirling cerulean rivers, the bound manifestation at their center, all of it bathed in the truth of THE Osmontian Source Infinity, and the refinent began in earnest.
THE Riven hung trapped in the middle of the surging rivers as they spun around it in their slow circular formation, and piece by piece it ca apart, flakes of it flicking away one after another and dissolving into the cerulean flow, drawn into Noah, broken down into the raw stuff of his own elevation.
And as it happened, the prompts ca.
|Refinent initiated. You are breaking down and absorbing the contained portion of THE Riven into your Osmontian Source Infinity. The process is stable. Your Egoic Intent maintains absolute control over everything bathed in your authority, including this.|
|THE Directives previously imposed by the presence of THE Riven are reversing. They were impositions of a stronger will upon a weaker vessel. That relationship has inverted. You are now the dominant existence in this exchange, and its conditions no longer bind you.|
|First Directive, reversed: You are no longer forbidden from speaking of it. You may say what it is, na it, and share knowledge of it freely. The seal on the knowledge was its seal. It is now yours to lift.|
|Second Directive, reversed: You no longer need to feed it Existential Biomass, nor consu lifeforms to sustain the containnt. The hunger was its hunger. You are not feeding a prisoner. You are eating one.|
|Third Directive, reversed: There will be no Irreversible Source Detonation from failing to gather its components. That threat was leverage it held while it held power over you. It holds none. Instead, the inverse is now true and to your benefit: through the refinent of this portion, you can begin to sense where its other sealed portions lie scattered across existence.|
Noah read it, and the prompts kept coming!
|Refinent yield: As you break down this portion of THE Riven, you are drawing into yourself the records, the capabilities, and the accumulated nature of THE Sealed One. Each is being assessed and integrated.|
|Its mastery of fused Infinity and Primordial Source, the seamless union it wielded better than any being before or since, is reinforcing and elevating your own Osmontian Source Infinity, accelerating your understanding of the fusion you have only just achieved.|
|Its records, the mories of an Age before THE Scales, the war against THE Maiores, the True Lifeforms, the it that it sought and never found, are being pulled into your knowledge as recovered information. You will hold what it held.|
|Its Source is being converted into your Source. The portion’s raw existence, the power of a being from before the frawork, is being refined into fuel for your Second Infinite Scale. THE Source Scale will be built, in part, on the substance of the thing that tried to build itself on you.|
|Caution: This portion is a hand cleaved to the wrist. It is not the whole. The whole remains scattered and sealed. As you refine this piece and your sensitivity to the others grows, expect the other portions to stir in response, as this one stirred when the Ore was mined. Gathering them will not be passive.|
Noah gazed at the flows of information pouring through him, the records and the capabilities and the converted Source all braiding into his existence, and in the middle of receiving an Age’s worth of recovered knowledge, he made a proclamation to himself.
"There is THE First Tongue," he said. "There is THE Infinite Tongue. There is THE Primordial Tongue. Three Tongues, and I hold a grasp of all of them, and not one of them is mine. They represent unique things, grand things, but they were authored by others, shaped to carry anings that aren’t my anings, identities that aren’t my identity." His eyes burned cerulean.
"So I’ll enact my own. A Tongue that carries , the way my Infinity carries and my Source carries and my Intent carries . THE Osmontian Tongue."
BOOM!
Everything within his existence buzzed and trembled at the declaration, the refinent rivers shuddering, the cerulean light flaring.
|A trendous undertaking. To enact a Tongue of your own is to author a foundational language of existence.|
|To make it possible, you must beco far more familiar with your just-erged Osmontian Source Infinity and your Egoic Intent of THE Quintessential Osmontian. You hold them, but you do not yet fully know them. When their imnsity reaches a certain threshold, and when you have grown familiar enough with them to consciously design and define their capabilities, you can enact your ideal Tongue. It is not a thing to be seized in a mont. It is a thing to be grown into, and then built on purpose.|
Noah’s eyes shone at that. A thing to be grown into and built on purpose!
He gazed a mont longer at the continuing refinent of THE Riven, the flakes of the ancient monster still flicking away into his rivers one by one.
And then he opened his eyes externally, and ca back to THE Hallowed Desne.
The region had changed in the minutes he had been inward. He gazed across it and found it full now, far fuller than when he had closed his eyes. Swords of Existence had arrived, and other Source Lifeforms of grand power, drawn by the spectacle of a Primordial-grade Intent blooming in ordered territory.
Massive beast bodies of Relictus surrounded the gathering, the ancient guardians of THE Source Lands co to see. Da Seraphine stood among them, and many turned his way as he rose, the weight of a great many powerful gazes settling onto him at once.
Noah took in all of it calmly, and focused on Da Seraphine, and spoke.
"THE Sealed One has begun to wake," he said, and the words ca out of his mouth freely, the First Directive reversed, the knowledge his to share at last.
"His appearance in THE Maw was what killed Sir William and the others. The mining of Eridarch Ore across the ages loosened his seal there, a piece at a ti, until a piece of him stirred enough to break loose."
His voice stayed even.
"So we have to prepare. We have to hunt down whatever parts of him are waking, wherever they were buried, before any more of them break loose the way that one did."
BOOM!
His voice was calm, almost casual, and yet he had dropped a bomb into the middle of the gathered Source Lifeforms, and the room split cleanly down a line he had expected!
The vast majority of the Source Lifeforms looked confused. They turned to one another, to Seraphine, searching for the aning of what the new Sword had just said, the na THE Sealed One landing on them as so much sound.
They did not know. The sealing had been long ago!
But Da Seraphine went ashen. And a select few others among the gathered powers went ashen with her, a handful of faces draining of color, beings who turned toward Noah with sothing close to horror, because they were the ones who knew!
The ones who carried the old knowledge, or were told of records, and who understood exactly what he had just nad, and exactly what it ant that it was waking.
Noah’s eyes stayed sharp on them as he held the room.
He had cut off and begun refining a part of the monster. But he did not let it make him careless, because a hand was only a hand, and the thing it had been cleaved from was still an ancient monster scattered across existence, still vast, still patient, still capable of crushing beings that made him look like a child.
He understood his situation precisely. He was a Sword of Existence now. He could use THE Sword of Existence, the authority and the station and the blade, to cut the limbs and the power from this being wherever its pieces lay waking, to sever and seal and hunt, while he devoured and refined everything about each piece he claid.
He would dismantle THE Riven the way THE Riven had once dismantled its betters.
One piece at a ti!
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