Chapter 5374: Plans and Wonders!
Chapter 5374: Plans and Wonders!
<THE Source Lands>
THE Aurum Vakshara sat at the edge of THE Strand of Broken Scales, where the lawless wild of THE Source Lands pressed up against the borders the Gilded Ones had clawed out for themselves.
It had been raised from the felled trunks of Lotusvara Trees and the bones of Source Beasts and a great deal of stubborn engineering, ringed by walls that pulsed with the amplified Egos of Superbius and Avaritia, the pride and the greed of a House that had decided this dangerous place would belong to it whether the place agreed or not.
Within its highest hall, beneath a ceiling lost in shadow, a long table of dark Source-Beast bone stretched the length of the room, and around it sat the Ealdor Gilded Ones who governed the incursion.
They were old, all of them, in the way that Ealdor meant. Old enough to have climbed past the impatience of younger Gilded Ones and into the slow patient cruelty that came after. They sat in their places with the unhurried authority of beings who had governed for longer than most existences lasted, and they discussed the work.
"Our advancement holds and continues rather nicely and slowly as we decided, even though we will likely be discovered soon" said one, a broad figure whose Superbius pride hung off him like a second robe.
"The Strand is being tamed, slowly, the way everything is tamed. With patience and with corpses."
"And the side of Infinite Lifeforms?" asked another, leaner, her eyes carrying the flat green light of Invidia. "Even we follow orders as we were told to integrate ourselves in their folds the most..."
A third Ealdor answered.
"The other groups have shared that we have made contact with elements among the Infinite Lifeforms. There is a faction inside them, larger than we hoped, that has grown tired of sitting beneath the Source Lifeforms and is more easily influenced. We just need to focus on them and many more will follow. Step by step!"
"A war between Infinite Lifeforms and Source Lifeforms," the Invidia Ealdor said, and smiled, "fought while the Gilded Ones quietly carry off the spoils of both. Ah!"
WAA!
"All of these are simply plans that have not yet met their flaw," said the broad one. "Do not relax into it."
They went on like that, around the bone table, weighing incursions piece by piece.
They were good at this! They had been doing it across ages as they rose between two prominent Lifeforms!
And at the head of the table sat one Ealdor who said little, and listened to all of it, and contributed only when contribution was useful, and the others deferred to that one without quite being able to say why.
It was the one who had given them the most.
It had been this Ealdor, after all, whose findings had opened the door to THE Source Lands in the first place. The others did not fully understand how. They knew only that this member of their House had a gift for unearthing things that should not have been findable, old weavings and buried knowledge and the seams in existence that the careful and the patient could pry open.
"You have been quiet, old friend," said the broad Superbius Ealdor at last, turning toward the head of the table with the respect the others all carried for that seat. "You usually are, until you are not. So I will ask plainly. Do you have more findings or information? Anything new from wherever it is you go to find these things?"
A pause, almost reverent. "It was your work that gave us THE Advent Wall. Without it we would still be standing outside THE Source Lands with our faces pressed to the glass. So I cannot help wondering. After a wonder like that, are there more wonders coming? Is there more you have found?"
The quiet Ealdor at the head of the table lifted its gaze, and considered the question, and answered in a voice that was calm and sure.
"I am making more progress all the time," it said. "More and more. Soon. Soon, I will have something worth bringing to this table again."
It let its gaze move across the gathered Ealdors, across the House it sat at the head of.
"Do not worry. I will ensure our people prosper. I will ensure we exceed every Infinite Lifeform and every Source Lifeform in existence, all of them, every one. You have my word on it. I have never broken my word to our Houses yet."
The Ealdors received this with satisfaction, and nodded, and returned to their discussion, reassured by the steady certainty of the one who had never once steered them wrong.
They did not know.
They could not have known, because the thing wearing the Ealdor’s face had been wearing it so well, for so long, that the face had become entirely convincing. They did not know that their oldest and most useful member had stopped being their member years ago!
They did not know that the findings it brought them, the engineering, the buried knowledge, THE Advent Wall, the seams in existence pried open, were not the gifts of a gifted Gilded One but the slow patient excavation of a thing digging toward its own scattered pieces, using Houses of ancient cruel beings as its hands!
They did not know that every wonder it had ever given them was a step in a plan.
They did not know they were sitting at a table with one of the cleaved fragments of THE Sealed One, housed in a vessel grand enough to pass, patient enough to wait, and far enough along now that it could feel the rest of itself stirring across existence.
And inside that vessel, behind the calm certain face and the steady reassuring words, THE Sealed One laughed.
It laughed at the Ealdors who thought it served them, or even THE Primeval Ones it currently had to be careful of.
It laughed at the breaches and the wars it was nudging into being between Infinite and Source Lifeforms. It laughed at how neatly the long plan had run, every piece moving toward the moment the pieces found each other again.
And then it thought of Osmont, and the laughter changed.
It thought of the vessel in the deep of THE Maw. The one that had not folded. The heart that had caged a piece of it instead of yielding, the identity it could not get a grip on, the foundation finer than anything this small recent Age had any business producing!
It thought of the chains of Osmontian Absolute Infinity wrapped endlessly around a fragment of itself, and the rune grinding patiently to spend that fragment down, and the forming Intent built on nothing but a stubborn man’s refusal to be anything other than himself.
The plan had been so neat. Year after year, so very neat!
And now there was Osmont in it.
How gloriously, THE Sealed One wondered, settling back into the Ealdor’s calm and certain face while the Houses discussed their little incursions around the bone table, would the plans change from here? How could he mess with his prized Vessel with all the many cards he had to deploy?
...!