Chapter 5231: Oblivion II

Vaeltharion’s ancient eyes did not change.

He raised his hand.

A judicial one, the specific gesture of a being whose authority did not require amplification through theatrical delivery.

"O Prime Causes."

His voice carried the specific resonance of a being speaking to the substrate of existence rather than to the beings standing in it, addressing the foundational truths directly through three integrations that sat at Silurian Paleozoic depth.

"Bind this poor soul. Do not have mercy. No...mercy."

BOOM!

It unfolded from the intersection of his three Cause integrations and the collective Cause authority of every Sororis Prima behind him, pulling simultaneously from their individual foundations and from the enormous Cause reserves of the nine Ragnars whose Prime Cause integrations contributed their full weight to the technique without being asked, the mass-produced architecture of their existence having been built from the beginning to serve exactly this kind of combined deployment.

The ability did not arrive as a projectile.

It arrived as a new arrangement of the surrounding space.

Obsidian-gold light bloomed outward from Vaeltharion’s raised hand in a configuration that did not move through the air so much as it replaced the air, the brilliant dark gold spreading across every coordinate simultaneously in a sphere that commenced small and expanded across the next several seconds into a structure that covered gigaparsecs of Observable Existence, its surface shining with the specific quality of something that was not merely blocking what was outside it but actively preventing the concept of outside from being relevant to what was within.

The name drifted to Noah’s perception through Pillow Talk’s final functioning moments as the structure completed itself around him.

THE Sepulchre of Extinguished Causes.

It sealed shut with a sound that was not a sound but the specific sensation of absolute enclosure, and then there was nothing.

No multicolored fire. No burning sky. No nine Ragnars. No Vaeltharion. No roaring of thousands of Gilded One foundations engaging against his Tongue’s administration of their vectors.

Nothing.

Noah could not see anything. He could not feel the ambient Infinity that had been flowing through THE Wandering Territories. He could not feel the Primaris Bond connection to Ubergulden Adelheid.

He could not feel the thread connecting him to his body in THE Sanctum Velanthra or the body aboard the Ubergulden vessel. He could not feel his own crown above his head or his own tail behind him or his own scales against the non-existent air of the non-existent space he was contained in.

He could not even feel his thoughts complete themselves.

The sentence that began inside his consciousness would reach its midpoint and then the midpoint’s continuation was not there, the thought unable to communicate its second half to the consciousness that had produced its first half, the internal dialogue severed at every attempt with the specific quality of a signal being cut rather than a signal being blocked.

Then.

|— — — — — |

...!

The prompts were blank or had insufficient information! Ruination’s voice could barely be heard!

|WARNING —— — — — — — —|

|You are currently contained within — — THE Sepulchre of — — Extinguished — — Causes.|

|The technique draws simultaneously from — — three integrated Prime Causes at — — Silurian Paleozoic depth, the — — collective Cause authority of — — twelve Sororis Primas, and — — —the combined Prime Cause — — reserves of nine — — — Ragnar-designation Gilded Ones — —|

|Effects — — —total isolation from — — Observable Existence — — Infinity — — Observable Force — — Unobservable Force — — external consciousness — — internal consciousness — — your own weavings — — any clones — — any bodies — — anything bearing your — — |

|The prison contains — — endless undefinition — — which attacks the defined — — weavings of your existence — — seeking to unravel — — the cause of your — — being — — your Hadean engineering — — your Infinite Cause — — your — — |

|Timer — — — — |

|The primary mechanism of this — — technique’s terminal effect — — could not be fully established — — against your existence — — The Cognitio Cause integration — — and your — — relationship with Infinity — — has created — — a sliver — — of possibility that — — |

|The — — timer — — |

...!

Information...was not coming freely. Information was being blocked!

Outside the Sepulchre, across the gigaparsec radius of its obsidian-gold surface, THE Wandering Territories fell into immense silence.

The Gilded Ones who had been mid-engagement with Noah’s orchestration found themselves abruptly released, the vectors that had been rewriting their bodies’ directions dissolving the moment the connection to their administrator had been severed by the enclosure. They drifted to rest in whatever configurations they currently occupied, several of them still mid-stumble from the momentum that had been redirected without warning.

The nine Ragnars floated in their formation.

The Sororis Primas behind Vaeltharion held their positions.

The obsidian-gold of THE Sepulchre shone against the fading multicolored fire that had covered the sky, the fire itself burning lower now without the Tongue sustaining its expression, the absence of Noah’s voice visible in the gradual dimming of the flames across the observable horizon.

Vaeltharion lowered his hand.

And oh, he looked grand.

Gold shone off of him with waves of pride and majesty!

He looked at the Sepulchre.

He said nothing as he waited. All he had to do was wait!

The silence continued!

---

Inside the nothing, Noah closed his eyes.

Which meant nothing in a space where his eyes had no information to process regardless of whether they were open or closed.

He sat in the severed quiet of a consciousness that could not complete its own sentences and let the severing happen around him without adding his own disruption to it. He did not fight the undefinition that was pressing against his foundations from every non-direction simultaneously. He felt it the way one feels a current by going still in it rather than by swimming against it, learning its character before committing to a response.

He felt something.

Not much. A trace. The specific trace of a substance that had been present in his existence since before it had acquired the vocabulary to recognize what the substance was, that had been the first capability he had ever expressed in the world that had been ending around him, that lived beneath every Civilization he had actualized and beneath every Cause he had integrated and beneath every form his engineering had taken across the full span of his climb.

Mana.

And below the mana, the thing that mana was a small version of.

Infinity.

It was there. Diminished, severed from every external source, reduced to whatever had been present in his foundations at the moment of enclosure and had survived the Sepulchre’s attempt to isolate even that. Not the boundless surging Infinity of the open engagement...a remainder.

The undefinition pressed against it.

He let his thoughts begin, and when the thoughts were cut at their midpoints, he let the cut be, and he found the thought again from the beginning, and he said it to himself in the simplest form available.

Oh, Infinity.

BOOM!

He reached for the core the way a drowning being reaches for whatever solid thing is nearest, not elegantly, not with the conducting grace of his open battlefield performance, just directly and completely, and he told the Infinity what it was.

He told it in THE Infinite Tongue.

Not a word this time. Just the Tongue itself, the direct address of a being speaking to a substrate in its own language, and the Infinity in his reduced core heard the address and responded with the specific responsiveness of a thing that had always been listening and had simply been waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it recognized.

Multicolored light bloomed inside the nothing.

Small at first.

The undefinition surged toward it from every non-direction with the urgency of a containment discovering a leak, and the light pushed back, and the space inside THE Sepulchre became the specific space of something that had been intended to be empty and was in the process of refusing to be!

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