Chapter 5965: The Strong And The Weak

For nearly everything that lived, power was taken. It had always been taken.

A seedling in a dark forest grew by stealing light from the seedlings around it, and a predator grew by eating what was slower than itself, and the slower things that survived did so only by becoming faster, or harder, or more clever, or more numerous, until something else learned to eat them too.

That was how life climbed, everywhere it had ever climbed, and no one who had climbed very far had ever found any reason to believe it was wrong.

The same law held all the way up. Newly Risen Immense Ones took from the lesser lifeforms around them, and Established took from the Newly Risen, and Ancients took Narratives and Legacies and whole regions of existence, and the Unfathomables took from everything. The strong survived and the weak became soil, and the soil fed the strong, and existence went on turning. It was not cruelty. It was only the shape of things, as natural as falling.

And at the very top, where the Excedere stood, they did not only take from other lifeforms. They took from existence itself.

---

Roxanna had been carving for hours. She hung in the dark above a region of existence called THE Hollow Meridian with her arms spread wide and her Narrative pouring out of her in a long, steady cut, and below her, existence was coming apart.

The Meridian was a place where the strings of existence ran unusually straight and unusually strong, thousands of concentrated weavings of existence laid side by side through the dark, and for a long time it had been left alone, because no one had ever had the strength to cut more than one grain there before existence noticed and pushed back.

Today was different. Above all of them, above Roxanna and the seven other Excedere spread in a wide ring across the Meridian, above the Unfathomables and Half-Unfathomables gathered in their ranks behind them, hung the Narrative of THE Shepherd of Falling Stars. It had never been used this way before. It filled the dark from one edge of the Meridian to the other, a vast and patient phantom of a shepherd as large as multiple Dimensions, robed in falling stars, holding a long crook of white fire, and wherever the crook passed, the concentrated grains of existence went still and quiet and let themselves be gathered.

That was what made it possible. Alone, an Excedere carving Existence had to hold the cut open against everything existence threw back, and most of the Narrative they spent went into simply surviving the attempt as Existence fought.

Under the Shepherd’s Narrative, existence did not throw anything back. It lay quiet under the crook and allowed itself to be cut, grain after grain, and the eight Excedere carved at the same time, with the Unfathomables behind them pouring their Immensity forward to hold each cut steady.

It still cost. Roxanna’s hands were bleeding, thin dark lines running down her wrists from where her Narrative had cut back into her, and the Unfathomable holding her cut steady behind her had gone grey in the face hours ago and had not stopped. Two of the Half-Unfathomables in the rear ranks had already collapsed, emptied out by the strain, and someone had draggd them back out of the way without a word.

Where the grains came loose, existence bled, and thick, slow Ichor in every color the dark held seeped out of the wounds in the Meridian and pooled in long shining lakes below the carvers, while a separate rank of Half-Unfathomables moved among the pools with vessels, gathering it.

Roxanna did not look at any of it. She looked only at her own grain, a long run of strings that kept stretching away from her even as she cut it, and she worked her Narrative along it one string at a time, steady and careful, as she was in everything.

She was tall and broad-shouldered, with dark skin and short white hair and armor of burnt gold plates etched with the trails of falling stars, and her eyes were black, with a single bright streak running down through each of them, the mark the Shepherd left on those who had served him longest.

She had served him a very long time, and before that, Ages before, she had had a family. A mother who sang badly, a father who made things with his hands, two younger sisters who fought over everything, and a small son who had only just learned her name. Something had come through their corner of existence, one of the great wars that passed over the small and the weak without noticing them, and she had not been strong enough to stand in front of it, and when it was gone, so were they.

She saw them now only in her memories and in the records she kept of them, old moments she could open and watch again, her mother singing, her sisters fighting, her son saying her name, all of them exactly as they had been and none of them ever coming back. There were others now, people she had chosen and who had chosen her, and she wanted power for one reason only, which was that she would never again stand and watch something take them because she was too weak to stop it. So she cut, and the last string of her grain came loose under her hands.

By the time the carving was done, the Meridian was in ruins. Other regions had been left untouched, but where the eight Excedere had worked, existence hung torn open in long ragged gaps, Dimensions near the cuts had collapsed in on themselves and gone dark, and the Ichor lakes below had grown wide enough to drown a Dimension in. In the middle of the ring, resting together on a platform of white star-fire that the Shepherd’s Narrative had laid down for them, sat nine kernels.

Nine Essara! Each Essara was a terrifying and rare resource as only Excedere could even try to carve out Existence with their Narratives and Immensity, and some had to work in groups to make it possible!

They were small enough to hold in one hand, and every one of them was humming. They were made of strings, wound so tightly that the strings had become something solid, with runes turning slowly at their centers, and each one showed plainly what it was.

An Essara of Distance that always seemed a little farther away than it was. An Essara of Weight that the eye slid off, heavy beyond seeing. An Essara of Silence, grey and perfectly still, which made everything near it go quiet. An Essara of Tide that rose and fell with no water in it. Stone, Light, and Heat, each burning or shining or standing in its own way, and then two that made even the Excedere go still when they looked at them, a Rare Essara of Echo that repeated the hum of the others back at them a moment late, and a Rare Essara of Destruction.

Its strings would not stay whole. They kept snapping and knotting themselves together again, dark red and black with thin white cracks running across them, and wherever its hum reached, the white star-fire of the platform cracked too.

Nine Essara of Existence, carved in a single day. No one in the ring had ever seen more than one in a single place before.

One of the Excedere drifted forward to the center of the ring, and the others turned to face him. His name was Castellan Vey, and he stood nearest to the Shepherd of all of them, a lean, grey-skinned Excedere in a long white mantle, with a face that had not shown an expression in Ages and a voice that carried without ever being raised.

"Look at them," Castellan Vey said, and he did not point. Every eye in the Meridian was already on the platform. "Do you know how many Excedere live their entire lives and never carve even one of these? Most of you know. Some of you were among them, until today. A lone Excedere carves alone, against everything existence throws at them, and spends half their Narrative to survive the cut, and sometimes the cut takes all of it, and they are never heard from again."

He turned slowly, taking in the ring and the ranks behind it. "Nine," he said. "Nine Essara of Existence in a single day, and not one carver lost."

"That is what the Shepherd is. Existence does not yield to any of us. It yields to him. It lies quiet under his crook and lets itself be gathered, and what he gathers, he gives to those who follow him."

His colorless eyes moved across their faces. "That is the boon of serving the Shepherd of Falling Stars. Not safety. Not comfort. He has never promised you either. He promises you the power to carve the very essence of existence out of the dark and make it yours, and he keeps that promise."

"There are those out there who will tell you that this is theft," he went on, his voice level and cold. "That existence bleeds when we cut it, and so we should not cut it."

"Look at the Ichor below us. Existence bleeds, yes. A deer bleeds when the wolf eats it, and no one asks the wolf to starve. The strong take, and the weak are taken from, and existence has never once in all its turning been any other way. We are only very, very strong." He turned back toward the platform. "The Essara go first to the Excedere, by the Shepherd’s order.Then to the Unfathomables strong enough to hold one without breaking. Roxanna..."

Roxanna drifted forward. The whole ring watched her come.

"Take the first," Castellan Vey said. "And then show them what it means. Watch."

She reached for the Essara of Destruction. It was hot in her hand, hotter than anything she had ever held, and her palm split open where she gripped it, thin white cracks spreading across her skin and filling with blood. She did not let go. She brought it up against her chest, and it went into her all at once.

Then she began to break. Cracks ran through her, white and fine, through her armor and her skin and her Narrative and the long story of who she was, and for a moment she could feel herself coming apart all the way down. Existence was testing her, she understood, asking whether she could hold the power to break things without being broken by it!

She set her teeth and held, while blood ran from her nose and her ears and the corners of her black eyes, and slowly, one crack at a time, the breaking inside her stopped spreading and turned outward instead, and became hers.

Something in her gave way. It was a binding she had never known she wore, a quiet law that had always told her some things were simply too great for her to break, and it broke, and she felt herself become a little larger than she had ever been!

Then the first Vein opened, and existence told her what she now held, plainly, as it told every bearer. Because even as they carved out existence and made it bleed, existence was too vast, uncaring, and too grand. So what if they carved out pieces of it? Even the Abominations of Existence that arose when one carved out too much or carved Profane Essara...if one was powerful enough, they simply overcame them. Existence, simply, was.

|Essara of Existence seated: Destruction.|

|Rarity: Rare.|

|Shackle broken: the law that some things are too great for you to break.|

|Veins: 3. Open: 1. Veins 2 and 3 open with Ichor of Existence.|

|Vein 1: THE Break That Goes All the Way Down.|

|Kind: Strike.|

|Cost: Immensity, spent with every strike. A share of each breaking turns back on your own body.|

|Effect: Whatever you strike is broken through every layer it has: its form, its Immensity, its Narrative, and its place in existence.|

|What breaks this way does not crumble. It comes apart and is gone.|

|The breaking spreads from where you strike along everything joined to it, until its force is spent.|

|Defenses, Narratives, and Immensity break the same as flesh.|

|Against a being of greater Immensity, the breaking spreads more slowly. It still spreads.|

|Where something was broken, existence is left with a hole, and closes it only slowly, on its own. Nothing broken this way can be mended while the hole stays open.|

|Shaped by you: born of one who could not stop a war from taking everyone she loved. It does not spare whatever stands between you and those you protect.|

To her, it was only information, cold and exact, laid out in front of her, as existence laid out everything for those who carved it. She read every line once, and she thought of a small son saying her name, and she closed her bleeding hand into a fist.

Castellan Vey nodded toward one of the other Excedere in the ring, a huge, slow-moving figure named Hadrumet, whose body was a mountain of dark iron scales and whose Narrative had held againt 5 other Excedere once.

"Hadrumet," he said. "Do not hold back."

WAA!

Hadrumet did not. He came at her before the words were finished, and his Narrative came with him, THE Bulwark That Does Not Yield, a phantom of an iron mountain as large as a Dimension rising at his back. He drove a fist the size of an Observable Existence at her with the whole weight of it behind him, and the Meridian shook with the force of it, and the Ichor lakes below sloshed up their shores!

BOOM!

The first blow landed. Roxanna had not yet learned how the Vein moved in her, and his fist caught her across the side of the body and sent her through three broken Dimensions before she stopped, ribs cracking, blood in her mouth, armor plates split and spinning away into the dark. She came back up out of the last ruined Dimension slowly, and spat, and looked at him across the Meridian. When his second blow came, she did not try to avoid it.

"THE Break That Goes All the Way Down."

She cast and used the power. For she...had a Vein. She had...the power!

HUUM!

She met it with her own. Her fist struck his across the knuckles, small against vast, and where they touched, a single white crack appeared in the dark iron of his hand. It ran up his arm, and branched, and branched again, through the scales and the flesh beneath them and into his Narrative, and then out of him entirely and up through the iron mountain at his back, a thousand thin white lines spreading through THE Bulwark That Does Not Yield faster than he could pull away.

Where the cracks ran, things did not crumble. They simply came apart and were gone, piece after piece of iron mountain falling away into nothing, and behind it, the Dimension it had been standing in cracked as well, white lines spreading through existence itself.

Hadrumet roared and tried to tear himself free, and Roxanna stepped in and struck him once, in the center of his chest, with every bit of her Immensity behind it.

Her knuckles split open on the blow, and white cracks ran back up her own forearm from the force of it, and she did not care.

BOOM!

What was left of the iron mountain came apart all at once. Hadrumet went backward through the Meridian, through the ruined edges of the carving grounds and through seven Dimensions beyond them, white cracks running all through his body and his Narrative streaming out of them in long dark threads, until he struck the far edge of the Meridian and stopped there, and did not rise.

Where the iron mountain had stood, there was a hole in existence, ragged and empty and edged with fine white cracks, and existence was closing it only very slowly.

He...didn’t die, right?

Roxanna hung in the dark with her hand still raised, breathing hard, blood dripping from her chin. The ring of Excedere was silent. Behind them, the Unfathomables and Half-Unfathomables were silent too, every one of them staring at her, and at the hole she had left in existence, and at what a single Essara and a single Vein had made of an Excedere who had been their equal...well, greater than her that morning.

Castellan Vey looked at her for a long moment, and for the first time in Ages, something that might have been satisfaction moved across his colorless face. Then he turned back to the platform and the eight Essara still humming on it, and the Ichor lakes shining below, and the vast phantom of the Shepherd still standing over all of it with his crook of white fire.

"Next," he said. Across the ring, the second Excedere was already moving toward the platform!

As Roxanna watched this and flexed her hands thinking of the Power of Existence itself she now held...

|Go and aid our other forces in THE Infinite Carcosa looking for THE Dreaming Human Origin. With your newly gained power, it should ensure no surprises when they track him down.|

...!

She received a message from her King as she nodded with immensity, and she looked at Castellan Vey who nodded back to her and sent a mental message.

’You wont be able to awaken more Veins of your Essara in a short time. Once you have acclimated and your Narrative has grown, we will provide you all the Ichor you need to awaken your other 2 Veins, your other 2 Powers of Existence. Go.’

HUUM!

With such words, she nodded and took a step as she disappeared!