Noah looked ahead with open surprise as THE Infiniverse and Emotive turned sharply, and even Seo-yeon’s eyes snapped open from her sensing, all of them taking in the entrants, and all of them especially staring at the floating limb!
Anaximander wiped his brows as if he were genuinely tired, and then he saw Noah, and his whole face lit up! He took a step, and appeared directly before the throne, and pulled Noah into a laughing bro hug, clapping his back.
"It has been many months, my friend! You look good!"
Noah shook his head as he returned the embrace and looked the explorer over.
He looked good? How the hell had this supposedly weak explorer made it to a Dimension this terrifying? And months had passed for him, when barely days had passed since they had parted over the red-gold skies of their Lower Observable Existence?
Existence was truly vast and full of terrors!
"It has been a little while," Noah said, his mouth curving as his gaze slid past the scholar’s shoulder. "How did you end up here with...that?"
Even Noah could not keep his attention off the heart-shaking limb behind them! Anaximander turned to follow his gaze, and it was the titanic figure of THE Creature, floating over across the sands, who answered.
"I called Anaximander over after facing two Gilded True Lifeforms I could not overcome," THE Creature said flatly. "The limb of a Primeval One was the boon from it that they were trying to devour."
...!
Noah’s brows rose.
THE Creature had met something he could not overcome, and the solution...was Anaximander? So this monstrous explorer held enough power to go against True Lifeforms as well? Noah smiled at the idea, another impossible line quietly added to the ledger of his strangest friend, and at this moment, a small figure padded across the golden sands.
Seo-yeon came over to greet the newcomer, stopping before him with her hands clasped politely, mirrored light drifting off her shoulders.
"Hello, Aba’s friend! I am Seo-yeon!" She tilted her head at him, and her small brows furrowed with genuine puzzlement. "You are as powerful as Aba and the big Creature? But I don’t sense any authority from you..."
Anaximander knelt down to her height and shook her small hand with complete seriousness.
"Hello, Seo-yeon. It is very nice to meet you." He smiled, and answered her puzzle simply. "Sometimes you don’t need authority to be powerful. You just need to be yourself."
...!
Seo-yeon’s eyes shone as she heard this, the words settling into her somewhere deep, and Noah watched his daughter store the sentance away like a treasure.
But his own gaze had already drifted back, again, to the limb of the Primeval One.
THE Creature watched him watching it, and thought for a moment, and then spoke.
"You can have...a piece of it, if you want. It is currently Anaximander’s, for him to study."
Noah shook his head slowly.
His eyes were shining brilliantly, for he was thinking about something else entirely, an idea assembling itself piece by piece behind the shine, and he voiced out calmly soon after.
"Do you two trust me?"
...!
"Then give me ownership of this entire limb."
...!

"It’s yours," Anaximander said.


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