The Primordial Record - Chapter 1837: The Beast of Inevitability
Chapter 1837: The Beast of Inevitability
Rowan blinked. The secrets of the Primordial Beasts were not what he had expected, but he did not want to be distracted by the new information he was gathering, and he asked Eosah,
“Why would the Cradle need a guard in the first place?”
Eosah gestured, and a new vision bloomed in the space between them, not of ladders or maps, but of a vast, silent, and utterly dark ocean.
“Think of the Cradle of Enoch not as a place, but as a state of perfect, unassailable logic. The Cosmic Record is its output, its manifest reality. But the Cradle itself is the processing core. To approach it with a false name, an impure intent, is like introducing a virus to a perfect machine. The Beasts are the antivirus protocols.”
She focused, and in the dark ocean, shapes began to move. Vast, non-Euclidean, their forms suggesting functions rather than biology.
“Before meeting you, Rowan, a Reality that is not bound by the dictates of the Cosmic Record, I did not see any reason for the existence of the Primordial Beasts, because all Realities need the Cosmic Record to center their nature.”
Rowan bowed his head in thought, “You say there is one Primordial Beast left alive that still guards the Cosmic Record? But I saw a Primordial Beast in the Arena before my battle with Primordial Demon.”
Eosah shook her head in denial, “Perhaps with your untampered Origin Power you can breathe life into the beasts you take within you, but they are all dead… and the Beast you saw in the Arena, is dead, but their forms inside my Reality is complete, and so they can be alive due to the strength of their Will, but outside my Reality, they would be dead bones.”
Rowan’s eyes brightened in contemplation, and he asked, “Who is the last Beast alive, and do you know the reason for its survival?”
“Good question, I have the answers to both,” Eosah replied, “The last Primordial Beast is alive because it is powerful, and that is not a word I use lightly. It’s connection with the Cosmic Record is the greatest among the Primordial Beasts, and perhaps calling it a Primordial Beast is doing it a disservice.”
Eosah gestured, and something began to take shape between them. Her light seemed to flicker as if the mere act of trying to visualize this last Beast was enough to shatter her into pieces.
A shape that resembled a swirling vortex of hungry complexity bloomed, and only immortals of their level could even refer to this portrayal as a shape due to its higher-dimensional structure.
“This is Ananke, the Beast of Inevitability. She is the embodiment of causal closure. She ensures that every effect has a cause that is itself within the system. To face her is to have every one of your actions, every thought, traced back to its origin. If she finds a source that is… external… unaccounted for… she does not attack. She simply renders your existence logically invalid. You cease to be a paradox; you become an error message, silently deleted.”
Rowan shook his head, a weary tiredness filling his bones, “So, my salvation does not lie with the Primordial Beasts.”
Eosah regarded him for a whole before nodding her assent, “Your uniqueness, your ability to act outside the channels… it is your greatest strength and your greatest peril. It is the very thing that may allow you to force your name onto the page of the Cosmic Record. But it is also the blazing signal that will draw the attention of the Beast, whose sole purpose is to prevent exactly that. You will not be walking into a library. You will be walking into a court where the judge is the laws of existence itself, and you are arguing for your own right to exist. And the penalty for failure is not death. It is erasure.”
“Erasure…” Rowan muttered, the word triggering a connection within his mind, and Eosah seemed to understand that connection,
“Yes, Rowan, your Altar of Unmaking, the tool you used to eradicate the Primordials, should be one of the scales of Ananke.”
Rowan shuddered. He had always wondered what sort of Reality could birth a tool as potent as the Altar of Unmaking, and knowing its source made him wary. Truly, in an existence that was infinite, what sort of monsters could be born inside of it?
Knowing this knowledge, how impressive was it that a single entity, Enoch, was able to leash all of existence to his Will?
Rowan became silent as he brought together all the new information he had acquired about existence.
One of the most surprising revelations was that all the bodies of the slain Primordial Beasts could be found inside Eosah’s Reality.
Rowan would have to believe that her claims of ignorance were valid; there was no reason for her to lie to him about this fact, and even if she was lying to him, he had gained enough information that his Will of Truth could discern the fact from the confusion caused by the hidden mysteries of the past.
Rowan knew that it was the Primordials who killed the Beasts; he had the Memory and he had their Will, and so it was not too far from a stretch to assume that they were the ones who brought the corpses of the Primordial Beasts into Reality.
It was a good thing that with the Will of Truth, he did not have to assume this answer; it easily confirmed his speculations, but this was the easy part.
Rowan was already aware that many mysterious places in Reality had the bodies of the Primordial Beasts as their foundation; in fact, the dimensional system that gave the lifeforms inside this Reality the capability to reach the higher dimensional level had a lot to do with the remains of the Primordial Beasts.
“Eosah, you said there was a connection with the Primordial Beasts and your present state. What led you to this judgment?” Rowan unexpectedly spoke, and Eosah folded her hands across her breast, a surprisingly vulnerable gesture from one so powerful and ancient.
“For a long time, I had always questioned the reason why I was born outside the Cradle, even when I was able to write my name on the Cosmic Record. I now see that the bodies of the Primordial Beasts placed into me must have been the reason why I can be born outside the Cradle. Rowan… Eos… I think that your birth inside me is a mystery that transcends even my creation and my death. Someone or something wanted a Reality to be born outside the control of the Cosmic Record, and in order for that to happen, they sacrificed all the bodies of the Primordial Beasts, and they made other preparations that I may not be privy to.”
Eosah turned around and gestured at the gate beyond Origin, “I once thought that I had found this Gate by accident, that the reason the Primordials remain inside my dead corpse was to fight for the path beyond Origin, but that may not be the entire truth, Rowan. What if… what if I did not find this Gate by my power? What if it was brought here to me?… What if…”
As she was speaking, Rowan began to retreat; he did not know the reason, but his body seemed to be moving by itself. Before he could analyze this reason, a large hand that appeared to be made from darkness burst out of Eosah’s stomach and snapped shut over her face, leaving her terrified eyes peering between the gaps of the fingers,
“That’s enough speculations from you… Your purpose is fulfilled.”
A cold voice said, and with a twist of the hand, Eosah’s neck was shattered, and her head burst open under the grip of this palm.
