Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5991

Chapter 5991: Journey To The Center Of... I

When the moment passed, the blue-gold and the crimson-gold were still there, pulsing through the bark and the roots and the black-gold soil, through Noah and through THE Infiniverse in his lap and through Ruination on the far side of the Tree. It had settled into them. It held!

THE Infiniverse opened her eyes first.

"Now," she said softly. "I will get started, Master."

She sat up from his lap and took his hand in both of hers. Then she opened herself to him.

Noah felt it at once. Down past her skies and her seas, past the realms and the Dimensions she carried and the lives moving through all of them, past his own family asleep somewhere in her warm places, there was a center. A deep, quiet point where every region in her met every other. And it was empty. Every sea and sky and realm in her leaned toward that point and found nothing there to lean on, so all of them shifted, all the time, a little restless, a little unsure of where they stood.

On the other side of the Tree, the crimson-gold light brightened, and Ruination’s voice came to him, plain and exact as always.

|THE Mountain at the Center of THE Infiniverse: proposed.|

|Participants: Noah Osmont. THE Infiniverse. Ruination.|

|Stage one: a backbone anchored at the center of THE Infiniverse, dense enough to carry every region without bending.|

|Stage two: roads of structure laid from the backbone outward, so that every region knows where it stands.|

|Stage three: THE Ruined Quantum Existence fused with THE Infiniverse. What could be, joined to what is.|

|Requirements: stability, density, structure, purpose, memory, choice.|

...!

Three stages. The first was a spine, and a spine had to be something denser than everything it carried, something that would never bend no matter how much leaned on it. The second was roads, and roads were Ruination’s to lay. The third was the fusion, and nobody in existence had ever done it.

The prompt did not stop there.

|Outcome: cannot be guaranteed.|

|It may hold. It may fail. Neither result can be called good or bad in advance.|

|If it holds: a new Existence emerges. No record of anything comparable exists.|

|Warning: an unprecedented Existence will be noticed. Extremely dangerous and unknown things may sense emergence.|

|Possibilities examined: countless. Possibilities that end safely: ???|

...!

Noah felt Ruination’s attention behind him, through the bark, scrolling through every road that branched out of this moment and finding no end to them. She was not trying to stop him. She never had. She was making sure he walked in with his eyes open.

A new Existence may be sensed. What would come for a whole Existence that had stood itself up out of nothing? Things he had no name for!

And yet, what had he ever made that had not carried that risk?

He had walked into the Existence with nothing and come out with a farm. He had planted a girl’s dream in the dark and lost a body for it. He had stood in the snow of the Carcosa and taken his own name off the banner of Kings. None of it had been safe. All of it had been chosen.

Noah smiled.

THE Infiniverse saw it and went very still, holding his hand.

"You asked me to be your Mountain," Noah said. His voice was quiet, and it carried through the whole field. "A spine does not have to be stone. It has to be something that does not let go, no matter how much leans on it. So I thought about what in me has never once let go of anything."

He looked up at the Tree, at the Branch of Dreams reaching east with its blue-gold blossoms open in the daylight.

"My Dreams. I dreamed my way out of nothing when there was nothing else to stand on. I dreamed countless things across my existence. My dreams have been bent and broken and scattered, and every time, they came back to me. They do not let go."

He turned his hand over in hers and held it.

"Anchor them at your center, and let them be the backbone. You have my infinity as you can take even more- everything in me that never runs out, and let it be the density. Let every region you carry lean on it as hard as it likes. It will not bend."

HUUM!

|Choice confirmed: Noah Osmont. THE Infiniverse. Ruination.|