The Primordial Record

Chapter 2010  The Nexus of Betrayal

Eva frowned, “A year would be too little to travel to the places I want to show you.”

Eos blinked and, holding her hand, pulled her closer to him, and his great Ominversal Wings erupted behind him, twin pillars of creation that connected the heavens and the earth, “You forget, you travel with me, and what is distant to you is meaningless to me.”

Her lips twitching, Eva made a mocking bow, “Forgive me, Lord Eos, I forget that I was beside true eminence.”

Eos snorted as he replied sarcastically, “Right… you forgot.”

Eva laughed, and a feeling of despair rose in her heart. It had been a long time since she had seen him smile, and by all the light in creation, this man was beautiful. Perhaps she should accept that Eos would no longer want to sacrifice any of them for victory, but she knew that he would have to… if the time came that her death would lead to a slight positive shift in the direction of the war, she was willing to take it, but she feared that Eos would not allow her to die.

She needed to show him that these sacrifices were necessary. Maybe she would not succeed, the time when she was far more knowledgeable and experienced than he was over, and he had long exceeded the scope of her understanding, but there was still a chance that what she was about to show him might change his mind.

She was the Primordial of Revelations, and it was possible that the things she had seen might end up surprising even a being like Eos.

“Well, I have only one year, and there is much I need to show you. This is where we are to go.” Eva gestured, and Eos could see the place she wanted to go deep inside Limbo. He was a bit surprised that in the short time that Eva had become the Primordial of Revelations, she had been able to reach such a place.

Her eyes pulsed with the Essence of Revelation, and Eos realized that Eva, in her wisdom, had been preparing for this moment. She might not know what challenge he would be facing in the future, but she had ensured that with her powers, she would be able to find answers that he might need, and the places she wanted to take him were one of the many paths she had investigated for the slightest chance that one day, he would need her assistance.

A wisp of a smile passed by his lips, and he gestured towards the space in front of them. This motion carried the aura of his Omniversal Wings as he took its power to open a road for them that led to the depths of Limbo.

Existence parted with a sigh, revealing a grey, soundless avenue paved with the forgotten names of the dead. Eva’s eyes widened when she saw these names, and even as a Primordial, she knew she could not count even a fraction of their number.

What made this even more shocking to her was that she recognized the writings and knew that only one hand could have penned all of these names, and it was Eos.

‘How did he find the space in his heart to come to the depths of Existence and record all the names of the fallen? How much pain is in his heart?’

“We will walk my path first,” Eos said, his voice stripped of all grandeur. It was the voice of a curator in a museum of nightmares. “So you understand the gallery you wish to add to.”

He stepped through, and Eva, her heart a frantic drum, followed.

Ⓡ

Eva was thankful that they did not spend much time inside this silent passage; it barely took a second, and they arrived at their location. Crossing a distance that would have taken Eva at least fifty thousand years to cross, and she was a Primordial whose Origin was linked to Light, meaning she had all the powers of an Angel, and was one of the fastest Primordials in Existence. Any other Primordial in her place would have needed ten times more time to reach this place. Eos, of course, with his Ominiversal Wings, cheated. His Archai had not stopped moving through Limbo, and as they moved, they planted seeds of their consciousness behind that slowly grew and radiated out in an ever increasing area.

These consciousnesses drew a map for Eos that he could access with his wings, ensuring that even though he was in a single place, his reach was ever-growing.

The first place that Eva took him to was one of the locations that his Archai had discovered. They had not deeply investigated it; they had only done some cursory inspection before they left, and they had called this place the Nexus of Betrayal.

This name was a bit tongue in cheek, but Eos was used to the weird frame of thinking by the Archai, and although he could delve deeper into the report submitted to him at any moment, he chose to allow Eva explain what they were about to see with her own words. It was why he agreed to follow her in the first place.

“Do you know what happened here?” she said and pointed to the ruins ahead of them, and Eos allowed his consciousness to sweep through it. He paused in contemplation, and he remained silent as Eva began to speak in earnest.

“It is difficult, nearly impossible for a Primordial of equal might to kill another Primordial; however, I found such a thing, and these ruins are what remains of their bodies. I believed that these two Primordials were guardians, and the flavor of what is left of their Origin was so close that they had to be siblings. However, one of them had been corrupted by the power of Destruction, and the lust for power, and to save the dozens of Realities under their care, one of the Primordial pushed beyond their limits to find the strength to end their sibling’s tyranny.”

Eva sighed as she spoke softly, “Do you know what I see here when I look at this scene? I see arithmetic.” Her hands trembled a little as she held them in front of her, as if she wanted to cradle the devastation in her bosom, “One life for the protection of the many Realities under them. This sacrifice was worth it.”

Eos stood before the monument. He did not look at the devastation, but at the empty space where the vanquished twin had been. The Singularity, warm and blue in his hand, pulsed once.

“I know this story,” Eos said, his tone conversational, almost idle. “The survivor’s name was Elyria. She won. She saved a dozen Realities. For seven Cosmic Eras, she was a hero.” He turned to Eva. His lovely eyes held no light, only a depth that seemed to swallow the glow of the Nexus. “Do you know what happened in the Eighth Cosmic Era?”

Eva blinked. “The Records of Revelations… are fragmented after that.”

“Revelation should seek the fragments,” Eos said, not unkindly, “But I know as you proceed deeper into your Origin Force, you will come to understand more, but first, let me show you.”