Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5936

Snow fell over THE Infinite Carcosa, slow and quiet and endless, because THE Long Night still held its effects everywhere, even here, where the snow drifted down onto rivers of infinity and vanished into them without a sound.

Octavius Infinitum hung in the air above one of those rivers with his arms bound behind him in chains of pale falling-star light of Immensity, and the infinity inside his body burned against the chains and could not break them. Beside him were the two other Ancients of his dominion and the ten Established Immense Ones who had followed them, every one of them bound the same way, every one of them bleeding light from wounds that would take an years to close.

They had carved out a dominion of their own in the Carcosa long ago, a small and stubborn stretch of infinite currents that answered to no one, and an hour ago that had ended.

A dozen Ancient Immense Ones and three Half-Unfathomable Immense Lifeforms in white and gold had come down a road of falling stars and announced that the forces of THE Shepherd of Falling Stars had spread out across existence to conquer, and that everyone they met would be brought into his fold.

Octavius and his people had refused, of course, and the Shepherd’s followers had answered by beating them until their Immensities and Narratives were nearly shattered, and then binding them for transport.

Now the captors were preparing to take them away to wherever these fuckers took the people they collected, and Octavius looked at them with all the hatred an Ancient could still hold. The three Half-Unfathomables stood at the front, tall and calm and terrible, and the tallest of them, a man with silver eyes and a long white braid whom the others called Corvin Astrael, was already turning toward the road of stars.

Octavius had lived in the Carcosa for longer than most lifeforms had existed, and he had never once been taken anywhere against his will, and he burned with the shame of it.

HUUM!

A burst of power rolled across the Carcosa from somewhere far away, so heavy and so sudden that every river of infinity in sight shivered and every flake of snow paused for an instant in the air. Octavius felt the infinity in his own body tremble in answer to it, and he saw the chained Established Ones around him go pale. The captors felt it too, and the three Half-Unfathomables looked at one another for a long moment without speakng.

Then Corvin Astrael turned away from the road of stars and toward the place the power had come from, and the whole company moved, captors and captives together. They rode the currents of infinity at great speed, crossing river after river and sweeping through the slow storms of snow, until the Carcosa itself seemed to blur around them. Octavius was dragged along in his chains, and with every river they crossed, the trembling in his infinity grew stronger.

…!

They stopped above a sea that was nearly empty. Octavius knew this part of the Carcosa, or he thought he did, because it had been an endless blue sea for as long as he could remember, and now its bed lay almost bare, with water slowly pouring back in from every horizon to fill it again. In the middle of that emptiness, floating above the shallow water, there was a farm.

It was about a mile long, with black-gold soil that shone faintly, three bright rivers running through it, and a small blue-gold sapling standing in the middle with four thin branches. A tall woman in a linen shirt and a work apron stood near the rivers, and out of her poured a steady, calm wave of Ancient Immensity, green and deep and old. At the far edge of the soil stood a long row of grey Nightmars, hundreds of them, staring at the farm and doing nothing else at all.

And beside the sapling stood a man with a hoe on his shoulder, wearing a plain work shirt, worn trousers, boots, and a wide straw hat.

He gave off no pressure at all, no Immensity, no Narrative, nothing that Octavius could feel, and he was looking up at all of them with an expression of mild surprise. The captors stared down at him, the prisoners stared down at him, and for a moment nobody said anything.

The Half-Unfathomables frowned, looked past the man, treating him as part of the field, and settled their attention on the woman leaking Ancient Immensity.