Chapter 5762: A Delectable Treat! I

Noah held the illusory ring in his hands, and turned it, and looked at it with the eyes he had now.

"You are a glimmer of an Existential Chorionic Gonadotropin," he said slowly, "worn inside the shape of a ring. That is what you are. That is what you have always been, and I could never see it until now."

He turned it again in his fingers. "So tell me. How did you manage that, when the Immense Ones shattered your existence to pieces? Or is your own Root of Immensity so grand that even they could not shatter it?"

...!

For a long moment, there was only silence.

The snow fell. The clock-hands of Atlas’s Dimension turned somewhere far away in another of his bodies. And the ring sat quiet in his hands, and Noah waited.

Then the old engineer spoke.

|It seems you have had quite a leap,| Atlas said.

|A major one, in a very short span. When you ceased, all of you at once, I will admit I braced for the worst. I thought an Immense One had finally caught your scent and made a move. But no. You were only grasping your own Root of Immensity.|

|Which, for the record, I had intended to help you form much, much later. After we had raised your Provenance and the depth of your existence a great deal higher. How you jumped that many steps in a little, I have no idea, and I have decided not to think too hard about it, because thinking too hard about you gives me a ringache.|

Noah’s mouth pulled at one corner.

|But you asked me a question,| Atlas went on, quieter. |So. Yes. In the tools I engineered, I spread my Root of Immensity. Every relic, every workshop, every ring, every hidden thing I ever made. I wove glimmers of my own Existential Chorionic Gonadotropin into all of them. Do you understand what that means?|

He did not wait to find out. |It means that as long as one of my tools survived anywhere in existence, some fragment of my Root survived with it. They broke my body on their anvil. They collapsed my homes into ash. And they thought they were done. But they could never find every tool. And if they could never eliminate my tools, then they could never, truly, eliminate me.|

Noah looked at the ring in his hands calmly.

"So this whole time," Noah said. "I have been carrying part of you."

|A small part. A glimmer. Enough to talk, to teach, to scheme. Not enough to walk out and reforge myself, which is the great inconvenience of my situation.|

Noah let that sit a moment and then he asked the thing underneath everything.

"What is your purpose, really? With me. You spread yourself through your tools, and you gave a great ring to THE REMINISCING WIDOW, which means you may even have her help now. Existence is give and take. You told me I could make the impossible possible, and I suppose I have just proven a little of that."

He held the ring up. "But what is the endgame? What are you actually after?"

And there was silence again!

|When an Immensity is destroyed,| Atlas said at last, |it does not simply come back. No matter how grand the being was. No matter how much of it survives in glimmers and tools. When you rebuild an Immensity that was broken, you never get the same power back. You come back smaller. Diminished. A great fire relit from one saved ember, and it never burns as tall as it did before.|

The ring pulsed faintly.

|Which means that even if I clawed my way back into a body, I would not be able to do the thing I most need to do. I could not take down the ones I need to take down. Not the way I am now. Not the way I would come back.|

|So there is revenge in it. There is a great deal of revenge in it. But there is also the simpler thing. The capability to do what I no longer can. If you grow grand enough, Dreamer. If you become truly, unfathomably grand. Then maybe, one day, you will be grand enough to fully restore an Immensity that was broken. To relight the fire without losing the height. Maybe. Who knows.|

The old engineer’s voice was quiet and honest and unashamed.

|It is all for my own selfish reasons, in the end. Even as I help you along. Do not ever mistake me for a kind old man. I am a very selfish one who happens to be teaching you.|

Noah listened to all of it, and he did not flinch from it, because a selfish reason honestly stated was a thing he could trust far more than a kind one. He looked at the ring once more, and opened his mouth to answer.

And Atlas blinked.

|Oh, fuck.|

The old engineer’s projection went rigid, as though he had forgotten something and only just remembered it in the worst possible moment.

|Right. Right, I am an idiot. Dreamer, listen to me. Hide yourself. All of you, every body, get all of your existence into your Existential Root Domain right now, this instant. How did I forget this? How did I forget the single most obvious thing?!|

The words came fast and alarmed. |Inside an Elsedimension they have no access to, you are hard to reach. But out here, a newly formed Root of Immensity? Some Immense Ones can smell that! A fresh Root reaching its weavings out into open existence is a scent, and it is a rare and delicious one, and you are broadcasting it right now like a lit fire in a dark forest!|

...!

Noah’s eyes pulsed as his teacher had a gift for delivering the worst news at the last possible second.

HUUM!

Because in that instant, he felt his existence buzz, the part of him still standing in the frozen forest where the Train had been split, and information came flooding in from that body all at once.

|THE UNPAID COLLECTOR smells something unique left behind in this place.|

|THE SLEEPLESS FIEND is surprised. He says that whatever has been found here is his.|

...!

Noah’s newborn Root drank the information from that body in a single breath, and he sensed it the malicious weavings of Immensity surging back toward the frozen forest, two of the beings whose war he could not perceive turning their terrible attention toward the fresh scent of a Root that should not exist!

He moved decisively.

He hurled his existence toward his Existential Root Domain, toward the sealed space that answered to no one but him, the one place in all of existence that not even an Immense One could enter!

HUUM!

His existence had already begun to fade, in the span of an instant, dissolving out of the frozen forest toward safety, and he could feel the tug of his impenetrable space reaching to receive him, pulling him home.

But.

An undeniable force closed around him and pulled him back!

It was not a thing he could fight. It seized his fading existence the way a hand seizes a fleaf in the wind, absolute and effortless, and it dragged him back out of his retreat, back toward the frozen forest, back into the open where the scent of his Root hung bright and exposed.

|THE SLEEPLESS FIEND says: friend. Do not go quite yet. Come back out here.|

...!

An undeniable force pulled him, and Noah’s eyes went cold.

He set his newborn will against the impossible grip, and in the same instant he made his decision!

Because he would not be caught, would not be held, would not be dragged before an Immense One to be studied and cracked open.

If he could not escape, then he would simply cease. He would dissipate his existence here completely, this body, this presence, all of it, scatter himself to nothing before any Immense One could close a hand around what he had become!