The Primordial Record

Chapter 1725: The Echoing Corridors

Pushing himself into the wound, Rowan’s body slowly descended into the third layer of the soul. A malevolent force pressed against his descent, but he had the weight of two entire layers of the soul behind his every action, and Rowan was able to muscle his way through the obstruction with relative ease.

As he did, he felt the dimension around him compress and transform, going through a million permutations and combinations in a short moment before settling into a strange hybrid of countless dimensional possibilities.

A wave of darkness stole his sight and all of his senses, and when they returned, he found himself in a long passage that seemed to extend for an infinity.

For a brief moment, Rowan thought he had been transported into the past as a mortal because the passage appeared to be made from the hands of men.

It was rough, with misshapen bricks pushing out of the walls, the steady trickle of a foul liquid running down its walls, and what he thought were webs lining the ceiling.

Every drop of the liquid that seemed to be emerging from the walls hit the ground and created an echo which continued reverberating with an ever-increasing pitch and frequency with no apparent end in sight, until the entire passage was filled with enough noise to drive an Old One to madness.

Despite the chaotic racket, Rowan could not afford to be distracted. He forcefully pushed his perception throughout the passage and discovered that it did not extend for infinity in a single direction.

In the distance, they began to curve and diverge. At first, they followed easy-to-follow directions. Soon, the passage started to blur into impossible directions, but Rowan did not stop trying to discover every single link in this chaotic mess.

Reaching forward to touch the walls, the spot he laid his finger transformed into a liquid mirror that reflected his image back to him, yet slightly warped.

As if his touch were an infection, the change began to ripple outwards, transforming this dilapidated corridor into a passage of liquid mirrors. As the transformation spread, silence followed.

The name of this level of the soul whispered itself into his heart, the Echoing Corridors.

With the transformation of the passage, his perception was able to spread faster until it reached a point where everything seamlessly merged as one, and Rowan gasped.

Although his mind was rapidly deciphering its endless curves and mysteries, he could not give the Echoing Corridors an exact shape; what he did know was that they were not empty.

As if coming out of another dimension, the inhabitants of this corridor began to make themselves known.

The Soul Spiders came first, multiple tapping sounds as legs that seemed to be made from flickering light touched the ground and the walls, their heavy bodies of stained glass pressed against the corridors, leaving long scratches on the walls that did not heal; instead, it began to break down the corridors.

In the blink of an eye, there were countless number of soul spiders all through the Echoing Corridors, pushing their bull against it and leaving festering gashes on the walls.

The Soul Spiders let out unearthly screeches. As if the act of damaging the corridors were causing them pain, and Rowan had an intuition that if he checked the materials of the corridor against the bodies of the spiders, he would find a connection, because he believed that this corridor was built by them.

And the fact that he was detecting that the overall shape of the Echoing Corridors resembled a gigantic web lent credence to that theory.

Rowan’s eyes twitched when he realized what Primordial Soul was doing. The destruction of this passage was deliberate; she wanted to cut Rowan off from the lower levels!

He did not fully understand the ramifications of destroying a level of the soul without rebuilding it first in a suitable host like him. Still, he doubted it would be good and might inevitably lead to the death of every single being inside of Reality. Still, it did not seem that Primordial Soul cared about the lives of anyone or the sanctity of the soul any longer; she needed to stop Rowan before he got any deeper.

“No, you don’t get to decide how this ends.”

Rowan was here as his soul and not his body. This meant that anywhere his perception reached, he could touch and influence it.

The Echoing Corridors had reached the higher ends of infinity that Rowan could presently comprehend, and even for him, it would be strenuous to reach all parts of it, but he was willing to try. Primordial Soul could not be allowed to succeed.

To mortals, infinity is a planet; they cannot stand upon any surface and see their entire world. To the gods, the universe is infinite; they can never see all of it at a glance. To a higher-dimensional immortal, Reality is infinite.

All of these were several levels of infinities that Rowan had encountered and conquered as he grew and evolved, and the Echoing Corridors had reached the upper levels of infinity that he had come across. In any other scenario, it would have been an exciting challenge for him to figure out how much farther he could push his powers, but he didn’t have the time for experimentation.

The primary weapon of his soul was his Will, and unlike most immortals or even all immortals in existence, all of Rowan’s Will was powerful and approaching the ninth-dimensional level. Reaching all of the Echoing Corridors at once was difficult, but it was not impossible.

Hands made of flowing silver and burning darkness erupted throughout the corridors, seizing each Soul Spider in their grip. They all screeched in pain, struggling to escape his grasp, but it was useless; his Will was too strong.

Rowan began to squeeze, but in the moments before the force in his grip could turn every Soul Spider into ash, he paused and reconsidered his actions. There was no way Primordial Soul would not know that he might be able to stop all of the Soul Spiders before they finished destroying the corridor.

There must be a trap here. His senses had told him at first that there were multiple inhabitants inside this place, and he had become distracted by the trillions of Soul Spiders, but where was the rest?

“We are here…” A deep voice said.

“Ever by your side…” a feminine but childish voice spoke.

“Rip and tear… You know you want to, animal.”