Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5430

Chapter 5430: Identity!

A being is not a thing that simply exists. A being is a thing that decides what it exists for, and is then bound, absolutely, by the deciding.

This was the cold truth the very old Lifeforms of THE Source Lands had circled for ages, the ones who thought in the dark while lesser beings merely fought. Identity, they concluded, was not description. It was law a being legislated onto itself, a maxim held so completely that it became the very architecture of what one was. The grandest beings did not have strong identities. They were their identities, with no remainder, no gap between the rule and the ruled, and it was precisely that seamlessness, that total self-legislation, which let a True Lifeform’s Egoic Intent reorganize existence around the bare fact of a name. To be without contradiction was to be unanswerable. The old ones understood this perfectly.

And understanding it did many lifeforms almost no good at all.

Knowing the key was not the same as turning it. Across the ages, sufficiently powerful Infinite Lifeforms and Source Lifeforms and the grandest of the Gilded all came, eventually, to understand that identity was the road to the terrifying power of the True. The knowledge was not even rare. It was practically common, among beings old and powerful enough. And still only a vanishing few could walk the road, because a being could study the map of itself for an entire Age and never once arrive, could know with perfect clarity what was required and simply not have the thing required.

The Source Lands still told the story of Olmander the Unwavering, a Source Lifeform of a genuine Olympian Intent, who learned the secret and resolved to seize it through sheer force of declaration. For one entire Age he stood upon a mountain of his own making and screamed his identity into existence. He screamed what he was and what he stood for and what he would never bend from, day upon year upon century, his voice wearing grooves into the surrounding reality, his conviction by every account sincere. He believed it. He meant every word!

And after an Age of screaming I Am! I Am! I Am!... not a single glimmer of an Egoic Intent had formed around him. Not a flicker. He had the volume and the will and the perfect theoretical understanding, and he did not have the thing underneath all of it, the seamlessness, the it, and so he came down off his mountain hoarse and unchanged, and the Source Lands have laughed at him gently ever since, the way one laughs at a thing that is also a little heartbreaking.

Sometimes a being simply did not have it.

It.

And no amount of knowing could conjure what was not there.

---

Somewhere in THE Source Lands, a temple stood that had it in abundance.

It rose out of a sea of slow golden mist, massive and ancient, its tiers climbing up and up into a sky the color of old honey and deep blue, every surface worked in gold and threaded with obsidian and blue veins of Primordial Source that pulsed faintly like a slow heartbeat. The air around it smelled of warm glory and power and something older underneath, the dry mineral scent of a place that had stood since near the beginning.

THE Aurum Vakshara, the temple was called, the ancient seat of a lineage of Source Lifeforms known as THE Originals, among the oldest continuous bloodlines in all the Source Lands, and the signatures of beings at the Triassic and Mesozoic Scales sat scattered across its tiers in meditation and conference, Fourth and Fifth Scale existences as stood as massive pillars!

The hierarchy of the place was written in altitude. The more powerful an Original, the higher they sat, and the highest tiers pressed down on the lower ones with a weight that made the lesser Mesozoic beings keep their eyes lowered.

On one of the higher floors, a group of Mesozoic Scale beings finished their business and bowed, deeply, before taking their leave down the golden stairs.

They bowed to a woman seated on a golden mat.

She looked wild, and free, in a way that sat strangely against the rigid ancient grandeur of the temple around her. A smile rested perpetually on her face, easy and amused, and she hummed quietly to herself as the Mesozoic beings withdrew, a small tuneless melody, as though she were somewhere far more pleasant than a seat of cold power. Her body was graceful and slender, her legs long and fair, folded beneath her on the mat, and her eyes were large and vibrant and far too knowing. She seemed, at a glance, like the least serious thing in the building.

And yet her power, even held loose and idle, made the weakest of the departing Mesozoic Scale beings feel as though the air had thickened to syrup, each step away from her a small relief they were careful not to show. Among THE Originals she was known as THE Mirthful Antiquity, and the name was a warning dressed as a compliment, because nothing about the Source Lands was older or more dangerous than a thing that had survived long enough to find all of it fucking funny.

As she hummed, a small grimoire in her hands buzzed.

|Your next target is designated of the highest importance. Proceed with full priority.|

|Designation: Noah Osmont.|

|Personality: pragmatic. Tyrannical. Composed under pressure, displays no fear, values his own identity above all external pressures. Cannot be cowed. Cannot be rushed. Will convert direct adversity into growth; do not feed him any.|

|Current location: THE Effluvium Sanctum. THE Braneworld Observable Existence. Somewhere unknown in Undefined Gaps.|

"Osmont," she said to the empty golden air. "Oh, my dear Master wants to use me like a common whore to get close to this little Osmont. After all these ages. The things I am asked to do..." She turned a page idly, still smiling.

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