The Primordial Record - Chapter 2205 The Smile of A Predator (1)

Chapter 2205  The Smile of A Predator (1)

This statement hung in the air like the death cry of an infant.

“No,” Prime said. “He thought, he thought you were gone. When Enoch entered Existence, and your presence could still not be found, he thought you were most likely dead; however, Vraegar was sent even before that time to dig his way to the past, while I was sent into the future. If not for the war still ongoing, Eos would be here himself and not me.”

Something passed across the child’s face, and Prime could not tell if it was grief or relief.

“Oh,” the last Incarnation said. “That did not surprise me. I was made to die, and forcing myself to live for so long is just something I have become. I had expected to be here forever, and I don’t know what I would do without this dead place keeping me company.”

Prime blinked, not knowing what to think about these words, but knowing they were all the truth. Eos had split up a part of himself many times, knowing that they would perish. It was one of the most painful and awful prices he paid to be able to reach this point.

It was not fair that one man should be forced to make such sacrifices, but he was the only one who could do it, and without someone like him showing them a path beyond self-interest, how could any of them be brave knowing the price that comes with failure?

Prime put the thought aside. The child had been alone for eternities beyond reasoning. Of course, his language had drifted as the small warmth of familial grammar had worn thin with disuse.

“He thinks of you often,” Prime said, gently. “I carry many of his memories. I know how much he has regretted your fate, trapped in the depths of End.”

“Does he?” Rowan said.

Prime did not have an answer prepared for that, because he had not expected a question. Frankly, he did not know what to expect. He was the bloodline avatar of Eos, but to say he understood the mind of the Grand Creator was a lie; Eos had long reached a place where his thoughts were beyond strange.

Vraegar, behind him, said nothing. The dragon’s eyes, Prime noticed for the first time, had narrowed very slightly.

“Of course he does,” Prime said.

“That’s good,” Rowan said. Then, softly: “I have missed him too.”

Prime smiled, but his smile did not reach his eyes. He looked at his surroundings and shuddered. How long could he have survived inside this place before he went mad?

End continued to take from you the longer you remained inside its core. It was the price you pay for staying in a place like this, and Rowan had stayed here for eternities beyond counting; it was a miracle that he was still alive, and even sane.

Yet there was something about the way he was talking that made Prime feel a bit… uncomfortable.

Still, he told himself that Rowan had been alone for eternities, singing a song to keep himself from forgetting he existed.

Of course, he would sound strange when he talked and expressed himself for the first time to others.

The fact that he could even speak with them was a testament to the impossible power of Rowan’s soul.

“Can you stand?” he asked.

“I don’t know, to save energy, the only thing I could do to still preserve my mind in this place was to sing,” Rowan said, with the small tired honesty of someone who had not attempted it in a very long time. “My legs have not needed to work for a while. Will you help me?”

“Of course.”

Prime reached for him, and Rowan lifted his small arms to be lifted, in the uncomplicated gesture of a child who trusted the adult picking him up. Prime’s hands closed around the thin ribs, and for a brief moment, his hands felt something underneath the skin that did not match the shape his eyes were seeing.

Something hard that shifted slightly under his grip, the way a fish shifts under a riverbed of stones.

Then the moment passed, and he was lifting a small bleached child out of a hollow in the substrate of End, and the child was light in his arms, as light as he should have been, and Prime’s hands were holding nothing but the thin ribcage of a boy who had been alone in the dark too long.

Fury stepped closer. His phoenix-light, which had been muted since the crossing, was flickering in a way Prime had not seen before, as if it were registering something it did not have the full power to name. Fury glanced at Prime, and Prime saw in his eyes a question that Fury himself did not seem to understand.

“Is he—” Fury began.

“He’s fine,” Vraegar said, too quickly.

Prime looked at the dragon. Vraegar was not looking at him. Vraegar was looking at the child in Prime’s arms with an expression Prime had never seen on the ancient dragon’s face, something careful and guarded, and that expression broke something inside him.

The child, Rowan, smiled up at Prime.

“Thank you,” he said softly. “It has been a long time since anyone touched me.”

Circe, who had been standing a few paces back with the hunted expression of someone whose dreams were finally telling them something they could understand, took a half-step forward. Her hand went to her mouth. She did not speak.

“Are you all right?” Prime asked her.

“Yes,” Circe said. Then, more quietly, “No.”

“What is it?”

Circe looked at the child. The child looked back at her, and in the long, quiet exchange of their eyes, something passed between them that the others did not share. Circe had been hearing this voice in her dreams for eternities, in the past, present, and in the future that she had ventured into.

She had taken a vow of silence about it, at Eos’s request, before she had even understood what the vow was about.

She had expected, when she finally met him, to feel the relief of a riddle solved.

She did not feel that.

‘What did this place do to you, my lord?’ she whispered inside her heart.