Chapter 5763: A Delectable Treat! II

The undeniable force held Noah’s fading existence in the open, and would not let it go!

He hung there, half-dissolved, dragged back from the threshold of his own sealed Domain, and above him in the churning obsidian snowy foam loomed the two of them.

They were vast and indistinct, present one moment as enourmous eyes and gone the next, THE SLEEPLESS FIEND and THE UNPAID COLLECTOR turning their terrible attention upon the small bright thing that should not exist.

|What a scent,| the Fiend said.

|A fresh Root of Immensity, reaching its little weavings out into the open. I have not smelled one of these in an age. And a unique one, at that. How fortunate for us that you did not have the sense to stay hidden.|

Noah did not struggle against the grip. Struggling would have told them how weak he was, and they did not need to know that yet!

"You have me confused with something worth your time," he said, and his voice came level with no fear in it at all. "I am a watcher who wandered in. There is nothing here for you."

|A watcher who ceased and reformed at the rim of my Narrative, many times over, and now wears the scent of a newborn Root. No.| The Fiend’s threads gathered, almost amused. |You are something rarer than a watcher. Come here, little friend. Come out into the open where I can look at you properly. I only want... to look.|

The grip tightened. Noah felt himself dragged another fraction back from safety, felt the tug of his sealed Domain reaching for him and losing him, and he made his decision then.

Dissipation it was!

HUUM!

And that...was when something unique bloomed!

Existence buzzed and turned upside down.

He recieved and overabundance of new information!

Shockingly, a slime arrived!

It dropped into the frozen forest out of nowhere, a shapeless blob of pure golden light, and the moment it appeared, both of the vast indistinct figures above went still. Not surprised, quite. Cautious!

The Fiend’s writhing threads slowed. The Collector’s looming shape drew back a fraction. The golden slime landed upon the air between Noah and the two Immense Ones, small and bright against their enormity, and it announced itself!

|THE DIMENSIONAL DEVOURER, Poona, has arrived. She says that this time, she will not fail!|

...!

The golden blob rose, and it flowed upward, and it changed. The gold took a shape and refined itself, and where a slime had been there stood a young woman, delicate and slight, with a fall of golden hair and a face of quiet loveliness and no aura at all, nothing, less presence than a candle.

She was tiny before the two indistinct titans hanging in the foam ahead of her, a slip of a thing against beings vaster than Dimensions!

She did not look tiny when she spoke.

"Do the two of you really want to fight just as the cold has come?" Poona said, "Look at yourselves. As grand and immense as you have grown, as high as you have climbed, and here you are, the both of you, ganging up to snatch at a little junior who has barely opened his eyes. How despicable are you, truly? Will your greed have no end at all?"

|Move aside, Slime,| the Collector said, and the way he said the word slime....frankly, it was very off putting as if he wss using it as a derogatory word!

|This one was found in our Narrative. That makes his disposition a matter for those who found him. Not for a scavenger who arrives late.|

|The Root is unclaimed,| the Fiend agreed, mild as ever. |What is found belongs to the finder. Step back, little Devourer, and I may let you keep the parts we do not want.|

Poona smiled.

It was a dangerous smile, and it did not touch the ease in her voice at all. "Well. I have laid a claim to the protection of this junior. As of this moment, he stands under... a certain umbrella. You understand what that means, I think, both of you. You offend me here, and you do not merely offend me. You offend a great many as you should know where I stem from. So..."

She tilted her golden head. "What will it be?"

Silence actually came down!

The two Immense Ones did not move, and Noah, hanging held in the cold, watched two of the most terrifying beings in existence weigh a slip of a golden woman with no aura and choose, against every instinct their greed was screaming at them, to do nothing.

The grip on his existence did not release, but it did not tighten either. They watched. They watched threateningly, their vast indistinct shapes hanging in the snow, and they did not act.

That inaction... told Noah more about who Poona was than anything she had said. Shd had said they would offend a great deal of many where she came from so...where the hell did she come from?

She turned from them, and she came to him, drifting close through the falling snow, and her voice dropped.

"Little guy," she said. "I really cannot afford to fail to bring another one of you back this time. So listen to me, and sense to the trueness of my existence as your newly formed Root should be very sensitive. I do not mean you any harm. Not the way these two fuckers did."

She glanced back at the titans, unbothered. "Let us go, before either of them talks themselves into something stupid, okay?"

...!

This unknown and terrifying being, who had made two Immense Ones stand still with a smile, was speaking to him as though she were coaxing a frightened animal down off a ledge.

And Noah, still gathered and ready to scatter himself to nothing, held that readiness, and reached out with his newborn sight into the boundless flowing information all around him, and read her.

He read the Trueness pouring off her, the deep weave of what she was, and in all of it, in every thread, there was no malice. None. Whatever else she was, whatever she wanted, she did not want to harm him, and his newborn existence could not find a single lie in her.

He did not lower his guard. But he did not scatter himself either.

"Just who are you," he said, "really?"

Poona’s smile turned almost fond.

"I am merely Poona. THE Dimensional Devourer." She drifted a little closer. "You do not understand yet what you are, so let me tell you, since it is the reason two Immense Ones just tried to snatch you out of the sky. A newly formed Root of Immensity is one of the rarest thing in existence, little guy. It is an entire path, an entire future of Immensity, sitting exposed at its very beginning. Untouched. Unspent. Full of everything it could ever become. To an Immense One greedy enough, a fresh Root is a Panacea. A cure, a fortune, a treasure beyond price, because to devour it is to swallow a whole path of potentail before it has walked a single step."

Noah went very still at that!

"So," Poona said brightly. "I am going to tug on your existence now, and pull you somewhere safe. Do not kill yourself off, and do not run away, all right? It would waste a great deal of my effort, and I have had a very long day!"

Noah thought about it. He weighed the two watching titans and their held greed, the golden woman with no lie in her, the impossible situation he had walked into simply by becoming what he was!

And he trusted his intuition more than anything else!

He let his readiness to cease uncoil, just slightly.

Then he turned his cold gaze one last time upon THE SLEEPLESS FIEND and THE UNPAID COLLECTOR, the two vast indistinct greeds hanging in the frozen foam.

And in the next instant, he and Poona were gone as gold light flashed!