The Primordial Record - Chapter 1809: Reality Wide Upheavals
Chapter 1809: Reality Wide Upheavals
Fury, the five Elythrii, and the mysterious mages, Lisa and Kacius, had been silent for a while after Vraegar left, his last words still echoing in their consciousness, “I have been called for more, and I will answer. We will meet again.”
Before he left, Vraegar finally revealed his true form, discarding the shell of a calm dragon for an embodiment of hunger and destruction. His body had expanded into dimensions that even Fury had struggled to grasp, and for the first time since he met the dragon, the proud god could not look the dragon in the eye.
It was easy to be all-powerful, but to be that and still keep a clear head, especially for a dragon of Vraegar’s nature, was rare. It was hard to imagine what would have led this proud and brazen dragon to become calm and subdued, but Fury knew it was for one reason… loss.
“You know, he told me of his brother, once, it was as if the memory of him was too painful for a dragon to recall.”
The silence after the dragon left had a physical weight; his ancient presence had been a pillar of their group, even in the short time they had together. It was said that surviving life and death struggles created eternal bonds, although this did not happen every time. In this situation, it surprisingly did.
Fury, more than anyone in the group, felt the weight of Vraegar’s absence the most. He had a history with the dragon going back millions of years, and in many ways, Vraegar had been the one constant in his life.
“We cannot stay here,” Fury said, his voice softer than they had ever heard it. “There is nothing in this dimension but desolation, and the echoes of the Abyss destruction can cause unknown mutations in empty places like this.”
Lyra of the Elythrii looked up, her eyes red-rimmed. “Go where?” There was a sense of loss and desolation in her heart that she found hard to describe. It was as if she had known the dragon before now, and it saddened her that she may have lost an opportunity to bond with him again.
There was a yearning in her core to pierce through an ephemeral barrier hindering her perception from finding the source of her confusion, but no matter how she struggled to find it, there was nothing; it was like a mortal trying to catch the wind.
“We have the last testament of Seed. We have seen things that no one else has,” Fury replied. He held up a hand, and a single, perfect feather, glowing with soft ember-light, materialized in his palm. “We are witnesses. We carry a truth that is now rewriting Reality itself. We must see how the script is changing.” He looked at each of them. “We will travel. We will observe. And we will… we will find a place to be.”
“What, like a grand quest?” Kacius the mage smirked, and his sister bumped him, “No, more like a refugee’s journey. Let’s move, I am eager to see the changes the unveiling of a power that can equal the Primordial would have on the myriad dimensions.”
“We too would like to see,” Lyra said, “It is clear to us that we are connected with this Reality, and we would like to search for those connections.”
Their first step was a crossing into the nearest stable dimension, a place known as the Aerovah, a realm famously rich with life and light, a hub of trade and diplomacy for a thousand lesser pantheons.
They discovered, to their fascination and sadness, that Aerovah belonged to their once-companion, Ghribba, the Silver Queen, who had died during the escape.
It was said that she went mad and killed all life in her dimension, but centuries ago, under the baptism of Primordial Essence, she reawakened her mind and reopened Aerovah. It did not take long for this place to become the hub of trade that it once was.
They arrived at their destination, stumbling through a temporary rift Fury tore open with a significant portion of his strength. The transition was jarring. One moment, the absolute silence and grey of a barren realm devoid of nothing but snow, the next, a sensory overload of color, scent, and sound.
Or what should have been.
Aerovah was… quiet. The great, silvery disks were its cities and roadways, which pulsed with a bright light that was now subdued, its light nervous and stuttering. The air, usually thick with the hum of flyers and the songs of crystalline machines, was thin, hesitant.
The beings they saw—floating botanical intelligences, six-legged stag creatures with bark-like skin, Angels, even Demons, all moved with a hushed urgency.
There were no greetings, no challenges. They were ignored, their presence noted with a flicker of fearful eyes before being dismissed; they had just torn a rift through space and time, but no one was taking notice of them.
“They know,” Kacius the mage murmured, his hand resting on one of the silvery buildings built directly from the disks of Aerovah. “The ground… It’s trembling. The bedrock of this place is now empty, Ghribba is dead, and the death cries of a Promordial are filling the gap.”
They found a gathering in the central station of the topmost disk, a place where envoys from a dozen worlds would normally be bartering and storytelling. Now, a single, ancient Treant was speaking, its voice a low rustle of leaves.
“…confirmed through seven different scrying pools. The Great Abyss is a scar. A devastating force has unmade it from existence. The eternal prison… is simply gone.”
A ripple of terror went through the crowd, an unknown fear budding in their hearts. The Abyss was a constant. It was where the worst of the worst were sent and found; the destruction of such a place should have been met with applause instead. Its absence was like the sun deciding not to rise.
“And the source,” the Treant continued, its wooden face creased with an agony that was centuries deep. “The energy signatures… they are beyond anything we have ever seen, most likely, Primordial. There is a new power. A being called Rowan. He who killed a Fundamental. He who unmade the unmaking. He has killed not just Primordial Demon, but Primordial Chaos as well.”
The name ’Rowan’ was whispered through the crowd like a plague. Fury felt a chill that had nothing to do with temperature. They were speaking of the same force that had faced down multiple Primordials with bare hands, but here, he was not a savior. He was a cataclysm.
An unpredictable, absolute variable that had entered the great equation of existence and shattered its core principles.
“They see him as a destroyer,” Lila whispered, her fingers unconsciously weaving a complex pattern in the air, reading the threads of fear and uncertainty that choked the atmosphere. “His act of vengeance has created a vacuum. And nature… even cosmic nature… abhors a vacuum.”
They did not linger for long at Aerovah; this place, without the guidance of Ghribba, was breaking down.
The fear was too thick, too suffocating. It was a paradigm shift of the most terrifying kind. For eons, the cosmic order was clear, however brutal: the Primordials were at the top. They were distant, arrogant, and terrible, but they were a known quantity.
Their rules, however harsh, were the rules. Now, the top of the pyramid was gone. The Primordials were shown to be mortal. And something else, something that had killed them, was now loose. The world had lost its governors and found itself in the grip of a force it could not comprehend.
Their next jump took them to the Chromatic Flux, a dimension of the Celestials. Aerovah was close to the Celestial domain, and it extended far into great portions of Reality. They arrived bracing for another scene of quiet despair.
Instead, they found chaos.
The sky was a raging battlefield of conflicting hues. Jagged bolts of furious red slashed against defensive shields of fearful grey. Swirls of panicked yellow clashed with desperate, hopeful blue. The very air screamed with a psychic cacophony as higher-dimensional energies of light were used against beings who should be its watcher.
“—a new age! The tyrants are dead! A new dawn arises,” a powerful Celestial Creator of brilliant, shifting magenta shouted, her form a whirlwind of revolutionary fervor.
“An age of what? Anarchy! The Demonic legions are already spilling from their broken leashes! Who will contain them now? This new light is a traitor and should be brought to justice,” a more structured, geometric form of orange light retorted, another Celestial Creator whose Host of Angels behind him were ready to continue the relentless conflict.
“This ’Rowan’ is a liberator! The New Light heralds his return. Your Light is pale and flickering. The Primordials you serve only live to exploit everything they touch.”
“He is a harbinger! He has broken the dams, and the flood will drown us all! You are all mad and should be cleansed before your wretched ideology spreads!”
This was another spark in a raging fire that unleashed a cataclysm as the two separate sides began to clash in earnest.
