The Grand Senator left his front line without permission, but his Realization wouldn't be denied. It demanded action, and refusing it was to refuse himself—to refuse to live.
He traveled too slowly for his tastes, but there was no alternative. The system refused to teleport him without authorization from Samir's Acting General, and Long Hei ignored him.
Carl felt betrayed. He had previously lied to his old sworn brother, yes, but—
His line of thought was interrupted by a pull so strong his body and soul hurt. Shen's life was in such great danger that the Grand Senator felt it physically. He owed the boy too much. The karmic debt was too overwhelming.
If he let Shen die without doing anything...
Alas, he had no skill to move faster. His every step let him jump from galaxy to galaxy, but he was too far away. The Alliance's universes were both superimposed and not; he needed to be in the right place to go from one universe to another. Well, not exactly; a few techniques could let him ignore that restriction, but they were slower than piercing the inter-universe veil at the proper locations.
So, he rushed. The first three universes passed by him in seconds. Sights that would take the breath of a mortal were ignored. He still needed another few seconds to travel through the remaining four universes to reach the Samir Node.
He hopped universes again and found a cthulhu waiting for him on the other side.
The Primordial Bridge had sent their hunting dog.
"Carl Jones," the creature bigger than a sun said, their deep voice as loud as an exploding star system, "you have committed treason by abandoning your post during a Void Tide. Surrender, and you'll be allowed to pay the price of your hubris with servitude."
Treason?
It took him a while to realize that, yes, he had technically committed treason. His Realization pushed him so hard and desperately to save Shen that he hadn't been thinking straight. It still did.
He also knew he could argue against it because he was compelled by his Realization, but a trial would be postponed until the end of the Void Tide. The Alliance would rather he serve as a slave and free him after the Void Tide if he survived than waste time with him. He had already left his post, after all. Forcing him to fight was better for everyone involved—except him.
Although he was A-rank—which allowed him not to get killed for such an indirect act of treason—he had no S-rank connections. At least, not any that would be willing to help him with this and expose their link in the process.
The Grand Senator replied, "I'll surrender with one condition: let me save Human Rising Star Shen first. My Realization demands it. I'll die otherwise."
"Dying is not so bad," the cthulhu replied. "Your Realization would benefit from it."
Such an absurd answer! Carl sighed. "So, we fight."
He would lose, but—
The overwhelming pull in his Realization disappeared.
It was there one moment, then gone in the next. Shen's presence seemed to have been erased. Every connection between Shen and the Grand Senator, the debt owed, everything disappeared in an instant.
He didn't comprehend what had just happened. He couldn't. It made no sense.
Even if Shen had died, Carl should've felt the consequences, not... not nothing.
But he did feel something right after. A weight. It was as if a wave of heaviness came and went through all Creation. It passed by him, almost crushing him, and kept going. A few suns exploded, blinking out in the distance. Their light was still visible, but the Grand Senator had just felt them get obliterated with his Realization.
Then, the universe became... lighter. Less restricting. It almost seemed to breathe in relief. Carl could move better somehow as if a hand with a firm grip over Reality had just let loose a little.
"There is no Human Rising Star Shen in all of Reality anymore," the cthulhu replied to Carl's early request. "Surrender, and I shall explain it to you."
Getting captured by the Primordial Bridge was very high on the list of things the Grand Senator didn't want to happen to him. Yet, he had no choice but to surrender—for now.
He just had to survive the Void Tide. Then, he could enact his plans in advance. There were even some preparations in case he was, in fact, captured. He wouldn't destroy the Primordial Bridge once and for all because some pieces weren't ready, but he would cripple it. Then, it would be up to the dragons to do their part, destroying whatever remained of it.
Learning what had just happened to Shen and his Realization was a big plus. He felt very lost right now, as he hadn't felt in a very long time. As a "traitor," learning about that in other ways would be dangerous for everyone involved, so he would rather not do it that way.
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"Very well," he replied. "I surrender."
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Purrrkrrrr found the little wolf the drow told her about.
She watched the human execute the Primordial through the cognitive-blood-essence resonance the canine had formed to find the boy. It was always a humble experience to see Reality use a first-class talent so effectively. Or rather, an uber-class talent, considering how the Alliance's Supremacies had failed to tame the boy to their own purposes.
Seeing the former Primordial Maiden fall brought a smile to Purrrkrrrr's face. The arrogant bitch deserved that and more. All Primordials were proud and aloft, but Sharendil had been needlessly demeaning and incapable of learning better. Sacrificing Yonolar for her was a grave mistake, but the idiot had willingly given his self-developed Voice for his people's grand plan.
A plan that wouldn't be completed anytime soon, not anymore.
Witnessing Reality get rearranged at a Voice's command was even more humbling. So much power, so well crafted. Purrrkrrrr herself was a step away from a similar ability, but that step was as wide as the Abyss. She would get there eventually, but that day was long in the future yet.
The Abyss getting freed from the old treaties, then forcibly tamed, showed how Sharendil wasn't an exception among the Primordials. They had grown too conceited after the last war. Purrrkrrrr reckoned single-handedly putting hundreds of races with S-ranks in their place did that to a species. They had gone too long without competition and lost touch with reality—pun intended.
Purrrkrrrr felt when the Abyss struck back. Not directly, as it didn't have the sentience for that. But the First Abyssal Dragon and the Extreme Yin Phoenix, two denizens of the Abyss, were "coincidentally" in a meeting when the Primordials curbed the Abyss power to ever take anything from the Primordials again.
The two beings acted in unison at the window of opportunity when the Primordials' Voices rearranged Reality to affect them. They reached through Space and Change, touching the Primordials' Voices back through the layer of Will holding all that existed together.
How could the Primordials have forgotten that imposing their Will upon Reality also meant opening their Will to a counter-attack? Or had they forgotten it? More likely, they had just believed they could resist anything.
They were mostly correct, but a crack appeared in their power...
Purrrkrrrr yawned. That was uninteresting. What mattered was that, in the end, the Primordials had lost half their power and were vulnerable to an attack—that never came.
The Void Tide was still going on. The Alliance would deal with that first. The Primordials' enemies would also wait until the last second of vulnerability before launching their attack because time worked more in their favor than the Primordials'.
As for the boy...
Purrrkrrrr had liked the boy's talent—his actual talent, not the Alliance's definition—in the past and would've taken him as a disciple in most other situations. Not this one. The wound was too fresh, and the Primordials would hunt her down for bringing him back to life, even if they had to further weaken themselves for it. They had just proved they had more pride than sense, and Purrrkrrrr would rather not die for a random human whom she had gotten slightly interested in the past.
Still, as thanks for getting rid of Sherendil, she threw up a bit of power in the boy's way. Time reversed, and his fading essence was frozen in time.
She coughed blood essence as her Realization was injured to bring something back from such a momentous point in Time.
One Standard month. She had given Shen that long to get saved by someone else. Whether he had made strong enough friends or not was up to him.
Purrrkrrrr could already feel the Primordials' angry glare, but what could she do? She was a cat. When she wanted to do something, she did it.
Life was as simple as that; it was mostly humanoids who liked to complicate things.
For good measure, she toppled a few stars out of place as she stepped through Spacetime back into her cozy corner of Reality. Everything about the boy was already forgotten.
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Liya woke up in the most comfortable double bed she had ever laid on. The white sheets felt divine on her skin—no other words could describe it. She was below an enormous tree, its leafless branches sprawling lazily for almost a mile, doing little to hide the grey skies above. The ground, filled with dead leaves, was soft as if from molten snow, and a cold breeze was blowing from the right.
"Finally awake," Darla said from nearby. "Spring is almost upon us, meaning you almost missed your opportunity to save the boy. Oh, and congratulations for cheating death for the first time. You're now a First Severance Realizator. Or First Rebirth, depending on how poetic you're feeling."
The dark elf was kneeling on the ground before a small table. The Queen of Spring and Autumn was kneeling on the other side, visibly pregnant, with a draggor standing beside her, a little to the left. They were drinking tea.
There was much for Liya to absorb in Darla's few sentences, but she cared more about the beginning. "Where's Shen?" She asked as she stood up.
Liya hated Darla. She also knew she couldn't defeat the woman, especially because her soul had stopped leaking. She was healed. Liya had even less of a chance now than when Darla had been injured in their fight.
"Dead. Or maybe unmade would be a better word. A little plan of mine to save him didn't go as planned, but I have a new one. Join us and start thinking about how to repay this delicious-looking high elf..." The draggor humphed unhappily, and the Queen of Spring and Autumn's face twisted from the disrespect. "...for her help as I inform you how to save your boyfriend. If you want it, of course. Your Realization couldn't care less about him anymore."
Liya frowned.
That woman always spoke as if she knew too much and struggled to make things easier for anyone else to understand. What Liya did get was that, indeed, she couldn't find Shen in her Realization. It was almost as if he had never existed.
Darla calling him "unmade" gave Liya the chills.
"I do," Liya replied. "I want to save him."
Her Realization wasn't all of her. She might not karmically owe Shen, but she recalled her debt. It was weird that her Realization could ignore her memories and feelings on the matter, but she would act true to herself, Realization or not.
"You sure do, which is why you survived your First Severance," Darla said with a smile. "So come, join us, and start thinking about how to pay enough to convince our high-elven friend here to get re-impregnated by orc blood essence this late in her current pregnancy, undergo accelerated carriage, and give birth in the Void of a destroyed Node in the middle of a Void Tide—making the Primordials upset with her in the process. Tip: whatever you're thinking of offering, multiply it by a thousandfold."
After dropping that confusing bomb, Darla took a sip from her tea, closed her eyes, and raised her face to the skies with a pleasant smile on her face.
"Isn't Spring the most marvelous season?" she said. "So much life born anew! I just love it."