The Primordial Record novel Chapter 2204

Chapter 2204: The Song of Rowan (2)

The song held them spellbound for what could be considered years, as they could not move for the fear that a single sound they made would taint the sound of it.

After a while, Prime sighed, his voice breaking the spell the song had over them. They could not just stand here forever when they had an important task before them, even though Prime would like nothing more than to stand here forever and listen to the voice of the Incarnation of his father.

Prime frowned when he sensed something, and he touched the air in front of him. A dawning look of horror began to cover his eyes. ’What is wrong with the time stream here?’

Looking back now, Prime realized that he had been too careless with his understanding of End, and its effects on concepts even as ephemeral as time.

"He has been singing for many eternities," Prime gasped in horror.

Circe and the rest turned to him, and Prime showed them that time in this place flowed much faster than in Existence, and a single second in Existence was equal to one cosmic era!

Enoch was the tether to this place, holding the past, the present, and the future firmly to this space, and when he left, this space became untethered, and it had drifted for eternities beyond counting.

To think about how much time must have passed was a deeply frightening thought.

"How can anyone survive in a place like this for that long?" Victorious Genesis gaped.

"I think it’s because of his music," Circe whispered.

Prime paused, and he nodded, "He sings because he cannot remember how to do anything else. He sings because if he stopped, he would forget he was still here."

"Damn, and I thought I could not respect him more," Victorious Genesis sighed, and then he asked, "What was he like?" In a hushed voice. "You know... before. I did not know him before he created our race."

It was surprising that it was the dragon that answered this question, but it was not too strange if you think about it. After all, he was considered to be the first child of Eos, and at the time Vraegar was born, Eos was still Rowan Kuranes, and he held one of the primitive bloodlines of the Grand Creator.

The dragon came from Rowan’s shattered body, and he had known his father for a long time, which meant that his connection to this Incarnation was also deep.

Vraegar was quiet for a long moment.

"He was hope," he said finally, and he smiled, a rather frightening look for a dragon. "Not a hopeful person, not a person who carried hope. I meant true Hope, like the concept, before we knew that it could be given form. This Incarnation was what Eos cut off from himself when he could not afford to carry hope any longer. Eos sent his hope into the dark to survive, because Eos himself could not survive with it. He had to be ruthless. Hope would not have let him be ruthless. So he sent him away, and he went where he sent him, and he did what Eos asked, even if Eos did not fully understand what he was asking for, and here he found answers."

The dragon’s voice had gone very quiet. "And Enoch found him, and held him. End had been slowly wearing him down all these eternities, and still, this is what we’re here to find... the ruined shape of the hope that Eos sent out to become the being who could save us all... if he fails to stop the enemy."

No one spoke after that, and they could only listen to the song of Rowan, and each of them could hear something different.

®

They pushed through the song, and they found him in a valley that had once been a heart, but maybe the others saw something different; it was impossible to tell and useless to ask.

Prime saw the topography of the landscape suddenly resolve itself, and he realized with a slow, dawning horror that they had been walking across a body.

The compressed civilizations were capillaries. The folded histories were muscle. The entire realm of End was shaped, at this scale, like a vast collapsed circulatory system, and the valley they were entering was where the heart had been before End had stilled it.

And in the lowest point of the valley, sitting in the hollow where the heart had beaten, was the last Incarnation of Eos.

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