Chapter 5845: Rage! II

The roar went out across the cavern and came back to him, and Noah stayed on his knees.

The weight stayed. Four Established Immensities pressed down on him from every side, Keeping and Penance and Drowning and Refusal, and his Dream pressed back against all of it from inside his skin, held in, held down. Snow fell on his shoulders. The black water lapped at his chest. Around him floated the grey dust of his giants and the cold ash of the Ember-Keeper.

Across the square, the thing wearing his face watched him, and waited.

Noah looked down at his own hands, flat on the stone floor of his first dungeon.

Adversity. Again.

He had met a great deal of it. Every time, there had been a way through. Sometimes the way had been his own strength. Sometimes it had been something he took. Sometimes it had been someone standing beside him.

He thought about his Dream.

It was grand. He knew that. It had covered a whole Legacy unseen, stitched light years of broken land back together, and crushed an Immensity of Ending in his hands.

But it had always been grand for more than being his.

He thought of the dreams he had carried into it from the very beginning. The dreams of his people. Every one of them inside THE Infiniverse, sleeping and waking and living their lives: his mother, his son, his daughter, the ones who had followed him through every apocalypse, the ones who had been born under his rule and known nothing else. They had dreamed of being safe. Of growing. Of a tomorrow. And they had dreamed it under him, because he was the one standing between them and everything that would end them.

They depended on him.

And he was THE True Human Emperor.

His Dream had always been made of more than one dreamer. He had simply left the rest untouched, until now.

So he pulled!

It started in his chest and went out along every thread that tied him to everything he ruled.

Up, out of the record, out of the Evergrave, across existence, into THE Infiniverse, still sleeping in her cocoon on the hill in his Domain. Through her. Into every realm she carried. Into every Dimension, every Observable Existence, every city and field and sea held inside her vast body.

And everything that dreamed, answered.

|THE True Human Emperor calls on the dreams of those beneath him.|

|Within THE Infiniverse: tens of thousands of Dimensions and Observable Existences.|

|Every lifeform within them that holds a thought holds a dream.|

|Insects dream. Microbes dream. Beasts dream. Trees dream, slowly.|

|Under THE True Human Emperor, all who dream are counted as Human.|

|Dreamers answering: ?????|

|The number cannot be counted. Every one of them is dreaming toward you.|

...!

It came to him as light!

Pure blue-gold light, purer than anything his own Dream had ever made, pouring down the threads from every one of them at once. A child dreaming of the sea. A farmer dreaming of rain. An ant in a tunnel dreaming of sugar. A whale dreaming of the deep. A single cell in a single drop of water, dreaming the faintest dream there could be: to keep going.

Every dream was small. There were more of them than there were stars.

It flowed into him, into his bound and held-down Dream, and his Dream drank it.

The weight of four Established Immensities was still on him. It stayed on him. But under it, he began to grow.

His body lengthened and his shoulders broadened. The night-sky skin of him deepened until the constellations drifting across it burned like true stars. White-gold hair lifted and spread behind him like a banner, and the horns of radiance on his brow rose higher, sharper, their light so clear it cut the faling snow. Then his features came in more distinct than they had ever been, every line of his face sharp and clean, as if existence were finally seeing him properly.

The four Night Lords felt it. Their Immensities shuddered against him.

Noah lifted one knee off the stone floor!

He whispered it. Only to the ones who would hear.

"Wake up," Noah said. "And show me the results of your dreams."

...!

—

On a hill in THE Existential Dreaming Origin Domain, under a sky of countless stars, two cocoons of blue-gold light split open!

They had been fed. An Immense corpse and its Core of Immensity. A Half-Immense corpse and its core singularity. And for a long time before that, they had been fed the slow steady change of Kin Evolution, his Tree pouring its Dream into them grain by grain. Now his Dream reached them full of the dreams of everyone under him, and whatever had been waiting inside them was done waiting.

Ruination stepped out first!

She came out tall and sharp, a woman of crimson and silver rather than a shape built around a crown, her hair falling in long threads that shifted like lines of written record.

Around her head, the Circlet of the Quintessential Ruin burned brighter than it ever had. Her eyes were red and clear and steady, and behind them, Noah could feel something new and enormous: a Dream that remembered everything it touched.

THE Infiniverse came out after her, and the hill was too small for her!

She came out vast and slow, her coat of many colors trailing realms behind it, every one of them dreaming. Her eyes held whole skies. When she breathed, the Dimensions over the Domain breathed with her.

Their existences hummed. Hummed so loudly the Domain’s river of light rippled. A buzz of vibrant Dream Immensity pouring out of both of them at once.

They looked at each other.

Then each of them took a single step!

—

They came out of the falling snow on either side of him!

Ruination on his left, crimson and silver. THE Infiniverse on his right, vast and calm, her coat of Dimensions spreading out behind her. And the instant they arrived, the weight of four Established Immensities found itself pressing on three instead of one.

Noah rose further. His second knee came up off the stone.

|Kin Evolution: Ruination.|

|A Dream Immensity has risen, formed through your Dream. Newly Risen.|

|Her title: THE Crown That Remembers Every Dream.|

|What her Dream touches, she keeps whole, and may call back exactly as it was. No dream she has held can be erased from her.|

|Kin Evolution: THE Infiniverse.|

|A Dream Immensity has risen, formed through your Dream. Newly Risen.|

|Her title: THE Cradle of Countless Dreaming Realms.|

|Every realm she carries dreams within her Immensity, and every dream within her makes her vaster.|

...!

Ruination looked at the four Night Lords, then at the black water, then at Noah, and her mouth tightened very slightly.

"Master," she said. "We seem to have arrived late."

THE Infiniverse stayed silent. She simply put one vast hand against the wall of the Choir-Mother’s song, and leaned on it, and the song bent.

And far away, in a different dream, something laughed!

It came from a cocoon that had been burning every color there was since the day Noah sealed it, inside a dream so full of feeling it had stayed restless every moment. Rage and joy. Grief and wanting. Laughter that turned into screaming that turned into laughter again. The cocoon shook. It cracked. And out of it, in a burst of every color at once, stepped Emotive.

She was gorgeous, and she was completely out of her mind.

Her hair poured down her back in long waves that changed color with every heartbeat, gold to violet to bleeding red to a blue so bright it hurt. Her eyes were wide and wild and burning. She was grinning, and the grin was half delight and half fury. In the hollow of her chest, the Stillborn Singularity turned slowly, dark and quiet, and around it her existence blared, loud as a crowd, loud as a storm, a Dream Immensity made of every feeling anyone had ever felt.

She took one step!

And she was standing in front of Noah, in the black water, under the falling snow, looking up at the four Night Lords with her grin getting wider.

"I...am going to fucking kill so many fucking things like you would never dream. Like, so many fuc-"

Her words were cut off as she was cursing too much!

|Kin Evolution: Emotive.|

|A Dream Immensity has risen, formed through a dream of every feeling. Newly Risen.|

|Her title: THE Heart That Dreams in Every Color.|

|What she feels, her Dream makes true around her. What others feel, she may take, and turn, and give back louder.|

...!

|Each rising would draw a Judgment.|

|Existence’s eyes are already here. The Judgments are counted, and held.|

...!

Noah saw the prompt, and set it aside. He would pay what he owed when it came. Right now, he was rising!

He thought of his Risen Dreams last.

They were gone. A bit weak.Thirteen giants, a scion, a horse, a golden panda, and a skinless hunter barely holding on. His Provenance remembered every one of them. He could dream them back one at a time, stronger than before.

One at a time was the problem.

"All your dreams are mine," Noah said quietly. "When they’re scattered, they’re weak."

He held out his hand.

"So join together. Fuse your dreams."

The air in front of him flickered!

Shapes came out of it. Faint, illusory, blue-gold. The thirteen giants of the Chase, their open ribs glowing. Their scion, roaring silently. The bone horse. The great golden panda, standing on its hind legs. And the Huntsman, still half torn, rising out of the black water beside them.

They flickered together.

Their edges ran into each other. The giants’ ribs became one rib cage; the panda’s vast shoulders became its shoulders; the Huntsman’s skull became its skull, the horse’s long legs its stride, the scion’s roar its voice. Every dream of every one of them poured into one shape.

In the next instant, it stood before Noah!

A humanoid colossus, taller than the four Night Lords, its skin a deep stellar blue-gold full of drifting light, as if it had been built out of the night sky.

Its head was a crowned skull lit from within. Its chest was a great open cage of glowing ribs, and inside it, where a heart would be, a golden panda sat cross-legged, eyes closed, holding the whole thing still. Around it, halo after halo of dreams turned slowly, ring inside ring, each one a little diffrent, each one a dream that had once belonged to something else.

|Your Risen Dreams have fused.|

|Formed: THE Amalgamation of Dreams.|

|Every dream it holds strengthens the others. Ended pieces of it are dreamed back by the rest.|

|Its measure: Newly Risen, on the cusp of Established.|

...!

The Amalgamation of Dreams turned its crowned skull toward the four Night Lords, and its halos turned faster!

The pressure was still there.

It was still four Established Immensities! Keeping and Penance and Drowning and Refusal, every one of them older and deeper than anything Noah had. But now it pressed on far more than one man. It pressed on Ruination, who remembered every layer of his Dream as it was ended and called it back whole; on THE Infiniverse, who leaned on it with an armament full of dreaming realms; on Emotive, who turned it inside out and threw it back; and on a colossus made of the dreams of everything he had raised.

And it pressed on the dreams of everyone under him, uncountable, pouring into him without end.

It was manageable!

He could feel his Order rising!

Noah stood up!

All the way up. The black water slid off him. The snow on his shoulders turned to light and drifted away. He was taller than he had ever been, grand and sharp and gleaming, without a single mark on him anywhere. He looked down at his hands, and then he dusted them off, one against the other, slowly.

Then he looked across the square at the thing wearing his face.

Its smile was gone.

Noah smiled instead.

"Existence is vast," he said. "And so are dreams."

The four Night Lords pushed down harder. He let them.

"I’ve been thinking a great deal," Noah said, as if they were sitting together over tea, "how maybe... I just need to replace existence... with my Dreams."

He tilted his head, just as the Faceless One had tilted it.

"Would that make things... simpler?"

He lifted his eyes past the Night Lords, past the snow, past the dark above the record, as if he could see all the way to the edges of everything.

"For what can existence be," Noah said softly, "except something that even I... can dream?"

...!

BOOM!

The words came down on the record like a blasphemy. The whole cavern shook, the walls cracked, and the snow froze in the air. Even the four Night Lords raged, their Immensities shuddering, as if existence itself had heard and taken it personally.

Noah stood in the middle of all of it, unfettered.

He looked at the four Established Immense Ones, at their Keeping and their Penance and their Drowning and their Refusal, at the light of Immensity burning in every one of them. Beside him stood three new Dream Immensities and a colossus of fused dreams.

And he wanted to see!

Could his Dream, and those standing beside him, strip the light of an Established Immensity?!