The Primordial Record

Chapter 1863: Eat The Hunger (3)

Rowan had endured horrifying betrayals and deception in his life, and yet, when he thought he had fully understood the game of life, anytime he became more comfortable in his role in the grand story, reality came around and swept his feet out from under him.

The tragedy of the whole story was that Rowan needed this confidence in himself and his abilities, or he would be unable to fight against the monsters who held all of existence in their grasp.

He knew that he was not just fighting against evil, but evil that had awareness, ancient and cold. But even with this knowledge, he had been led astray.

Rowan closed his eyes and tried to settle his rapidly beating heart. He always knew that the journey ahead would be hard and that he would most likely fail. All the evidence pointed to the fact that he would lose the ultimate battle, since the board was greatly stacked against him.

To put all of this into perspective, a mortal could grow wiser with age and experience, but their bodies and minds were frail, and in a few short decades, they would stop improving. But this was not the case for immortals, especially for beings like Primordials.

Rowan did not know how long they had lived; he only knew that they had begun killing Realities sixty-five million Cosmic Eras ago, a span of time that still boggled his eternal mind. It did not matter that the Primordials were cursed and could only find moments of clarity when they sent pieces of their Origin into the Realities they wanted to devour, because they had had so much time to learn and grow.

They could experiment and refine their knowledge countless times over the nearly infinite time they had been alive, and technically, it was impossible for Rowan ever to surprise them, because they had essentially seen everything. His most excellent plans were their routine amusement, and his triumphs and failures were the little victories they sprinkled on his path.

“Rowan, what happened?” Eosah groaned as she clutched her head. “I thought I was in a dream, and now that I am awake, it seems that the dream has not ended. I can no longer feel the pressure of the Primordials on my chest, and after so long, it seems this is the first time I have been able to draw breath. What did you do to drive them away?”

Rowan looked at Eosah, and he smiled, a bit of sadness leaking into his eyes. Of course, they did this to her; it was not enough to pillage her body, but the last fragments of her soul were manipulated as well. Even though it seemed to be an easy thing, deceiving Rowan was difficult.

“What do you remember, Eosah?” Rowan asked, as his heartbeat went from racing to steady in a moment, while his main body Eosah curled up into himself. It was okay to brood and to feel down when everything around you fell to pieces, and Eos was in pain, but he still had to fight, and Rowan could be the strong side of him that everyone would see.

“It’s all a blur… Why does my head hurt so much? If you had not imparted to me the wisdom of a mortal, I don’t think I would understand this discomfort. But that is not the question, Rowan, you must have done something incredible to drive them away.”

Rowan’s eyes tightened, “Eosah, why have you not looked behind you?”

She smiled a bit in confusion, looked behind her repeatedly, then glared at Rowan, slightly irritated. “Why, there is nothing behind me?”

“Oh, what about that door? The entire reason you are alive and the only weapon you had against the Primordials.”

Eosah went silent, but Rowan could see that her mind was running at a thousand miles per second. He could no longer watch as her identity was spiralling beyond control when she obviously could not reconcile her present situation with what her memories were telling her, and so he acted.

His body blurred, and he appeared before her. Before her senses could fully understand what was happening, Rowan’s hand covered her entire face, leaving only her confused eyes peering out through the gaps of his fingers, and he pushed his perception into her mind in order to unravel the secrets behind her soul.

Looking back now, if he had not been confounded and in awe of the grand power behind her, Rowan should have long taken this step. Still, he tried not to flog himself repeatedly over his past failures. Mistakes were meant to be learned from, and he would show the Primordials that their greatest mistake was keeping him alive.

They did not see Rowan as a threat, only a tool, a dangerous tool to be handled with delicate hands, sure, but still a tool. Suppressing these thoughts from interfering with his mind and leaving all of the pain and baggage to Eos, Rowan’s consciousness tore through the defenses of Eosah’s mind.

Maybe the Primordials might not have anticipated such a thing to happen, or they did not particularly care, because the defenses over her mind were weak, in comparison to what Rowan should have expected from a being of Eosah’s stature. Still, recognizing how deeply he was played by the Primordials, Rowan had to admit that their greatest defenses came from his ignorance than anything else… If they had made the mind of Eosah too powerful, then it was highly probable that Rowan would have quickly seen her as a threat and would have been much more difficult to influence as a result.

What he saw was heartbreaking, and even for him, who had seen some of the most depraved sights in existence, he could not have imagined how much suffering could be inflicted on one person.

Rowan’s mastery over the soul meant that at a glance, he could easily read the entire story of a being, be they mortal or immortal, but Eosah did not have a soul… it was something similar, but it was not a soul…. just a jumbled collected of exprinces and power fused into a whole mass, and then the memory of her personality was slapped over it.

He would have called it shoddy work, but there was a stark elegance that screamed of pure functionality. The Primordials did not care about her well-being or whether their work caused significant and irrevocable damage to what was left of her memory; as long as she could function in the task they gave her, everything was according to their plan.

This meant that everything they built around her memories was made from sharp glasses and needles. Nothing was left to chance, as a billion points of pain were crafted in each neural highway to steer her mind in the path they wanted her to follow. Eosah was a puppet, and what was more despairing was that she did not know she was a puppet.

Any part of her that would have struggled to understand what was wrong with her memories or her behaviour was greatly discouraged from arising due to pain, a pain she could not understand or avoid.

Rowan had pushed into her mind with great force, but then he slowed down, wary of shattering this delicate construct in front of him.