In the Infiniverse, where golden sands dreamed beneath seas of multicolored Infinity, the heartbeats had multiplied.
Above the endless sea, singularities of beating hearts floated in their millions, each one pulsing with the steady rhythm of a foundation that had been engineered to survive what ordinary foundations could not. Above those hearts, dozens of forms hung suspended in the Infinity-rich air, their bodies soaking in the multicolored currents that surged upward from the sea below and permeated their newly transformed existences.
They were smaller than THE Primus Apeiron. Slightly. The scales were present, the horns, the tails, the dorsal protrusions, all of it present but carrying the specific quality of forms that had been derived from a primary template rather than being the template itself. Where Noah’s Primus Apeiron form blazed with the full density of Nearu Absolute Infinity, these carried the concentrated but comparatively modest Infinity of his people, each one burning with whatever foundation they had brought into the engineering and whatever the engineering had made of that foundation.
Naldine’s form carried rivers of golden light between its scales. Arch Lich Ra’Zan’s carried the deep cold luminescence of something ancient that had been given a new body to inhabit. Henry’s carried the blue-gold that ran through everything the Osmont bloodline touched. Barbatos’s was compact and precise, the specific quality of someone who had always been more dangerous than their size suggested.
Ul’moreth’s Apeiron was filled with a hairy golden exterior!
They began to wake.
Ruination looked at all of them with shining eyes, her crimson-blue illusory form moving slowly through their suspended ranks with the calm authority of a system intelligence that had received its operational parameters and was ready to deliver them.
|All of this exists for adversity and challenge to propagate growth and progression. Because without growth, we will eventually be stifled. All of you are unfathomably weaker against the beings you will face. You may be collapsed in a single engagement. If not collapsed, they may attempt to capture you.|
Her voice carried cold tyrannical precision.
|You will not allow capture. Inside your Apeiron engineering, there are weavings for a final measure. When your collapse becomes inevitable, you will activate THE Infinity Kilonova.|
|THE Infinity Kilonova: Upon activation or upon death, your Apeiron existence will detonate in a supernova of compressed Infinity that devours every trace of Infinity within a one-mile radius of the detonation point. Every being within that radius will find their Infinity reserves sapped, their Infinity channels temporarily severed. The detonation cannot be avoided. It cannot be contained. It occurs whether the enemy wishes it to or not. You are not merely soldiers. You are consequences.|
A pause.
|Go. Live and die. Feel Infinity and progress.|
Her eyes shone harder.
|Progress!|
BOOM!
---
Back in the Wandering Territories, Noah was pulling on the chains.
THE Absolute Superbius Ego of Infinity had ignited within his Primus Apeiron form, the golden Pride rising through his multicolored scales and pressing outward against the chain configuration with the specific authority of a being whose Ego had been taken to its Absolute expression, and the power it produced made the earlier Superbius display feel like a preliminary announcement before the main declaration. Several chains had already come apart.
The ones remaining held because hundreds of Gilded Ones were collectively refusing to release them, their Ira foundations locked in coordinated tension, their Superbius commanders issuing cold synchronised commands that kept the configuration from developing the weak points that would allow a single sustained pull to unravel the whole arrangement.
The Gilded Ones moved with practiced efficiency.
They had fought Relictus. They had protocols for exactly this category of contained threat, and they were executing those protocols with the precision of beings who had learned through eons that precision was the difference between a successful containment and a catastrophe.

The Apeiron in question happened to be THE Emperor Penguin.

THE Infinity Kilonova!
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