Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5147

Chapter 5147: False Idols! II

A terrible stillness settled across THE Gilded White Mountain.

Then, from the highest tier of the grandest temple, a massive figure stepped into view.

The Primordial Architect who emerged burned with plasmic golden flames that crawled across his skin in slow whorls, the color brighter and cleaner than the multicolored gold of THE Creature’s fires. He stood twice the height of any other being on the mountain. His body was built in the proportions of a war-statue rather than a living creature. Oh, and he had two heads.

Two heads, side by side, set upon the single massive neck, each one crowned with a halo of its own plasmic flames. Both faces were sculpted. Both faces were handsome.

And both faces were showing rage at this moment, the left head’s anger cold and measured, the right head’s anger hot and open-mouthed, the two expressions working together the way a blade and a bludgeon work together when a single enemy must be dealt with from multiple angles at once.

His voice came from both heads at once, one pitch slightly lower than the other, the overlap creating a strange harmonic resonance that carried down the mountain.

"Your mere presence at the base of this mountain is blasphemous."

Both mouths spoke the same words. Both mouths were moving in perfect synchrony.

"How dare you speak with such disrespect toward the ones who have given us everything? Civilization is togetherness. Civilization is community. Civilization is the acknowledgment that we are stronger when we orient ourselves around those greater than us, and THE Gilded Ones have given us exactly that orientation. They have shared it with us. They have permitted us to stand within their reach. They have given us a glimpse of what existence can be when the highest capacities are actually expressed rather than suppressed. And you, a wretched little Primordial Architect who abandoned his own classification out of grief for a fucking woman, you stand at the base of our mountain and call them false?"

The left head’s mouth twisted into something close to a sneer.

"How dare you, O Creature?"

The right head’s mouth opened wider, the rage pouring through more openly.

"What makes you even think what you are doing is anything other than a suicide mission? That is all this is. That is the only honest description of your career since you abandoned your original foundation. You are a walking corpse pretending to be a movement. You are a grief-soaked little experiment shambling across THE Wyld leaving bodies behind you because you cannot face the fact that the only body you wanted to save was lost to you long ago and no amount of Primordial Architect corpses will bring her back."

Both mouths spoke together again.

"The day you stand before a Gilded One, I want to see if you will talk the same way you talk now. Or whether you will be unable to raise your head. Whether your multicolored flames will gutter down to embers in their presence. Whether your rage will finally reveal itself as the tantrum of a small wounded thing pretending to be a revolutionary. I have seen Gilded Ones at close range. I have knelt in their presence. You do not understand what you would actually face. You do not understand how small you are. Your bravado is the bravado of someone who has never yet been shown the scale."

THE Creature’s visage did not change during any of this.

His flames continued to flicker in their silent rage. His posture remained exactly as it had been, feet planted on the pale stone among the corpses, hands loose at his sides, head tilted slightly upward toward the balcony where the two-headed Primordial Architect stood. His eyes, visible through the flames, held a clarity that did not belong to a being who was shaken by what he had just heard.

When he replied, his voice was calm.

"I hope to very soon stand before a Gilded One."

THE Creature let the words settle.

"Especially THE False Golden Idol. I hope this more than I have hoped for anything across the long climb of my current existence. I wish for it with a depth of wishing that would frighten most beings if they understood the wishing properly. You think I am afraid of that encounter? You have inverted the actual situation. I am not afraid as much as I am impatient. The encounter has been the entire point of everything I have done since I rebuilt my foundation from ash. Every corpse I have laid down has been a corpse closer to the one I am owed. Every tier I have climbed has been a tier earned in service of that single future meeting."

He smiled as it was not a pleasant smile!

"When I finally stand before THE False Golden Idol, I will not speak as much as you imagine I will. I will not waste words on a being who has earned silence from me. What I will do, instead, is split his skull along the structural seam where his Pride is thickest. Or in his case, not Pride as he gave you all Pride while he holds Superbius. I will watch the light in both his eyes change from the expression of a titan receiving reverence to the expression of a child receiving consequence. And I will watch him bleed. I will watch him bleed for a long time, because bleeding is a slow process when it is done correctly, and I have every intention of doing it correctly."

BOOM!

The words carried a weight that pressed the flames of the two-headed Primordial Architect into visible agitation.

The massive being on the high balcony erupted with power. Plasmic golden flames roared upward from his body until they stretched above the roof of the temple itself, their color deepening as his rage climbed into its fully-expressed form. Both of his mouths spoke as one, the voice booming down the mountain with the full authority of his classification brought to bear.

"You have no such power to say such things!"

His halos flared.

"I will show you what your words are actually worth!"

The entire mountain mobilized.

Dozens of Primordial Architects moved from their tiers and their balconies. Flames of various colors bloomed across their forms as they prepared for descent. Weavings of authority unfolded into their combat configurations. The mountain, which had held its balance across long peaceful centuries, committed to the engagement with the full weight of its assembled residents.

And THE Creature simply looked at all of it.

His posture had not changed and his flames had not brightened!

His eyes had not widened pr changed. He absorbed the mobilization with the calm of a being who had anticipated every second of what was about to happen and who felt no need to adjust his plans in response to the mountain’s collective decision.

He spoke without turning his head.

"Witness me, Anaximander."

His voice was soft, reserved, meant only for the being floating behind him.

"Witness, and pray for these poor souls."

---

HUUM!

Multiple Calymmian Proterozoic Scale Primordial Architects initiated Pulses of THE Scales simultaneously from their positions along the balconies of the temples. The somatic weavings formed faster than most beings could follow, fingers curling and uncurling through the ancient sequences, palms rotating outward, hands flicking releases across the air. Verbal weavings layered atop the somatic ones, voices rising together in the old structural formulas that Primordial Architects had been using since long before the temples on this mountain had been carved.

THE Silurian Light bloomed first.

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