Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5915

Chapter 5915: Dominion II

<Existential Interlude- THE Carver of Faces>

Every lifeform wears many faces.

There is the face it shows its children at night, soft and patient. There is the face it shows a friend in grief, quiet and steady. And there is the face it shows the thing that comes to burn its house down, the one it hopes its children will be spared from seeing.

Every one of these faces is true for its moment. The hard part of living is learning which moment you are standing in.

Long ago, in a valley between two warring Dimensions, there lived a carver of faces. She made masks for the lords of the valley, and her masks were famous, because whoever wore one became, for as long as it sat on his skin, exactly what it showed.

A young Immense One came to her and asked for the kindest face she could make. "My people are tired of war," he said. "I want to be gentle with everyone."

She carved him a face of warm wood, smiling, with patient eyes. He wore it every day. He forgave thieves. He fed beggars. When the soldiers of the next Dimension came to his gates, he went out to meet them smiling, opened his arms, and asked them what they needed.

They burned his Dimension in a single night. He died still smiling.

His son came to the carver next. "Make me the hardest face you can," he said. "I will never be weak like my father."

She carved him a face of black iron, with a wolf’s mouth and eyes like nails. He wore it every day. He drove the invaders out of the valley with the power he gained and hunted them back across their own border until their rivers ran thick.

He hanged deserters. He hanged the hungry. When his own daughter cried at night, he heard her through the hardened face, and the hardened face answered her in a voice she remembered all her life.

He died old and unbeaten, and only the crows came to his burial.

His granddaughter came to the carver last.

"Which face should I wear?" she asked.

The old carver looked at her for a long time. Then she gave her both masks, the warm wood and the black iron, and a small knife to cut the straps.

"Wear them both," she said. "Take them off often. And learn, before anything else, which one the moment in front of you needs."

The granddaughter ruled for three hundred years. Her people loved her. Her enemies spoke her name in whispers. When the next Dimension came to her gates, she met their envoys in the warm wood and listened to every word. When they had finished, she put on the iron, walked out, and did what had to be done. Then she came home, and took the iron off before she opened her children’s door.

When she died, her people carved two statues at the mouth of the valley. One smiled. One snarled. Travelers argued for Ages over which one was really her.

Both were.

A face is a tool for a moment. Having many is no danger. Forgetting which one the moment needs is....very, very dangerous.

---

Snow fell on the Elsedimension mountain where Noah stood.

It was a quiet peak, white and steep and empty, and from it he could see almost everything. Above him, in the torn sky, Moriarty floated with more than a hundred Immense Ones of THE Legacy of THE Acharya of Immensity gathered behind him, robes stirring, faces pale. Beings who had lived for Ages. Beings who had built halls and bent Dimensions and raised Lineages.

And none of them could do a single thing.

The power of the foreign Immensities spread out across the Legacy.

Noah smiled grimly.

It was a strange thing, he thought. In one corner of existence, these same beings were legends. Lesser lifeforms whispered their names, built shrines to them, raised children on stories about them. Somewhere, right now, a small lifeform was looking up at the sky and wondering about Immense Ones and their narratives.

And here, in their own home, they were an occupied people.

Power was like that. It was only ever large or small next to something else. The same Immense One could be worshipped in one breath and crushed in the next, and the only thing that changed between the two was who else was standing in the room!

Below and around him, the followers of THE Iron Psalm of the Last Gate went about their work.

|A Totem of Dominion has reached you.|

|No Immensity detected.|

|Restriction applied: none.|

...!