Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5960

Chapter 5960: Animals

<Henry>

Henry had never once thought of comparing himself to his father. It was not modesty, and it was not fear, it was only that the idea had simply never made sense to him.

He had grown up with a father who came back from apocalypses of Domains and Wheels and Observable Existences different every time, and then from things far worse than apocalypses, and somewhere along the way Henry had simply accepted that his father was the kind of being existence rearranged itself around, and that he himself was not.

But he wanted to make him proud. That had never gone away, not in all the centuries he had lived inside the Dream Engine, growing and learning while his father fought somewhere outside, and not after he woke up and his father turned him into something new.

He still remembered his father’s face when he had turned the five of them into Risen Nightmares, the apology in it, and he remembered telling him how he was still him and meaning it. He was still himself, only with obsidian hair now and dark, gold-edged moth wings that lay against his back, with closed eyes marked along them that sometimes opened when he was not paying attention, and with a strength in him that had not been there before, enough to stand against an Established Immense One and win.

That was the thing he kept thinking over while he waited. His father had shown them how vast existence was, and how terrifying, full of monstrous lifeforms that could swallow regions without noticing, and Henry knew exactly where he and the others stood in all of that, which was not very high. So what would his father ask of them now? Would he send them out against some Legacy to unleash their Nightmares on it, or against Ancient Immense Ones, beings far beyond anything they could fight, so they would learn by bleeding?

His whole existence buzzed with the possibilities. He had so many new things inside him that he had barely tested, and every one of them wanted to be used, and he had spent so long behind his father that he could hardly bear the thought of standing still any longer. Then he felt it, deep in the center of himself, the call he had been waiting for, warm and familiar and unmistakable, and he answered it at once, his heart pounding, wondring what his father would have him do.

---

He arrived on a farm. It was small, perhaps a mile across, with black-gold soil and three bright rivers running through it and snow falling softly over all of it from a sky that did not seem to end. For a moment Henry only stood there in the snow, confused, and then the pressure of the place reached him, and his knees nearly gave owt.

It was dense. Every grain of that soil was heavy with power, and so were the rivers and the falling snow and the air itself, and when Henry reached out with his senses, he found more power packed into this one small farm than in the whole of THE Infiniverse!

It was grand several times over, all of it held in a single quiet mile of earth, and his wings opened on their own and the closed eyes along them all flew open at once.

Beside him, the others were arriving. Thalia stepped out of nothing with her nine golden tentacles on each side lifting in alarm, Kazuhiko appeared with his blade arms already raised, Barbatos landed in a crouch with her devil wings spread wide and her stellar obsidian skin catching the snow, and THE Emperor Penguin came last, his black-glass plates chiming as he turned his crowned head in every direction at once, all six of his gold eyes wide. None of them said anything, because none of them knew what to say.

Henry looked around. There were long rows of mounded soil across the field, and at the center of the farm stood a small blue-gold tree with six Branches and glowing flowers, and beside the rivers a tall green woman in a linen shirt and a work apron was pressing soil back into place with her boots, pouring out an Ancient Immensity so calmly that it made his teeth ache.

On the porch of a small house built from curved dark shell, a slender winged woman who looked partly insect was watching them with quiet, ancient eyes, and on the porch rail a small white cat lay curled with one bright eye open, and Henry could feel something old and enormous curled up inside her, sulking.