The Primordial Record

1005  Awakening Of Madness (7)

Noah would suddenly see other people appearing and disappearing into the fog, all occupants of the ship yet still separated. None could interact with each other and any instructions were sent directly into their minds. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

There were powerful Calamities that could infiltrate the minds and hearts and inside this warship, security was paramount, disaster could fall on any other warship, but not this one, because the consequences would be dire.

Noah followed the path outlined in his mind and tried not to think about the ghostly figure moving in the fog, knowing he was one of them.

It was startling to suddenly see sunlight piercing through the everlasting gloom ahead, and Noah Rithmast suddenly found himself outside in the sun, and ahead of him, blazing against his senses like an erupting volcano were seven figures–seven Ascended Rank Explorers.

There were no words to describe them. If Noah was seen as a god by those below him in rank, to him these Explorers were the real gods.

When Noah left this place, he had considered that he would be extremely lucky to gain the attention of a single Ascended Rank in this expedition, no matter the supposed benefit in it, Ascended Rank Explorers were extremely busy, their attention taken by matters involving higher continents, and for them to be involved in an extremely lowly continent like New Hope was unlikely, yet seven Ascended was before him here, and among the seven, one of them shone brightest, a direct member of the Council of Nine.

In his entire life, Noah had barely seen a dozen Ascended, and that was in a distance. To reach this rank, he would have to fight bitter battles against Calamities for at least a few million years and claim hundreds of Continents, perhaps thousands, details on the power levels of Ascendants were sparse.

Noah barely had ten continents under him, most of them were in the New Class, and he did not know if he would survive the next century battling against Calamities, than the millions of years of battle that would make him an Ascended.

He was standing before Titans. Each of these figures had endured tribulations and battles that had claimed billions and they still stood. Gods, all of them.

An Ascended Explorer had traveled down so deep in the path of Aura that their bodies lacked any frailties of the flesh, they could be regarded as a vast mass of Aura that was compressed into a rough humanoid shape.

Their bodies were ever-changing, shifting as if made from fog, and their heights were in the hundreds of feet. Before them, Noah appeared like an ant. They stood like pillars holding the heavens.

Noah bowed, their presence overwhelming, vast enough that it shattered the growing fear in his heart that he might be wrong in the assessment of New Hope.

Nothing remained inside his mind but these seven terrifying presences and a small hope like a fleeting dream that one day he might stand beside them.

One of the seven gestured a motion his mind barely caught, and Noah felt his body move without his accord, and he suddenly found himself on a massive thumb, his mind dully interpreting that yes he was standing on a thumb, and yes again, it was not that strange because the Left Hand Of God, this warship was literally a hand.

"Let your heart be at peace young Explorer, for your journey was not in vain, and the things you have seen are not untrue. See, there is your sea of Aura, and it is yet unclaimed."

Noah shivered and walked towards the edge of the thumb, forgetting for a moment that he could not fall because he was a Deific Explorer who had claimed the skies.

Below him, at what appeared to be the bottom of the earth, were twin streams of Purified Aura, seemingly greater than what he had seen fifty years ago revolved like two weightless oceans.

Again he was struck with Awe, this was too much power, so much unclaimed potential, and it was just sitting here, for fifty entire years.

"Young Explorer, where is it?"

"What?..." Noah replied distractedly,

"The Piece of Heaven child, where is it?"

Noah looked below dumbstruck, now noticing that the massive stone mountain he saw below previously surrounded by the Purified Aura had vanished,

"I don't understand it was here when I left."

Sigh… "It is as we have feared, what heaven gives it takes away. We are leaving."

Leaving… that word shook Noah out of his lethargy, "Wait… wait, we can't leave, the Purified Aura below is still unclaimed."

"You know nothing young Explorer, the depths of the earth are not a place even we can touch. This Aura has already been claimed. This land would become a forbidden zone, nothing will…"

Noah saw it first, and he was sure the Ascendant saw it shortly after for they became silent, an abnormality, a darkness in space that stood out in vivid details for it contrasted against the red and blue ocean of Aura surrounding it.

"What is that?!" Noah gasped in horror as he noticed the darkness was growing, it seemed to be consuming reality, and then the darkness was no longer darkness but an eye.

The transformation was so fast and shocking that Noah wanted to scream but then he stood frozen in shock as the golden gaze of an alien iris turned and swept past him. His eyes exploded from their sockets, and a thousand bleeding wounds opened all over his body.

Noah was not aware but his bladder broke loose, and a Deific Rank Explorer was not aware that a warm liquid was dribbling down his legs, but that was the least of his problems.

"I…I…" he was not aware that he was mumbling to himself as urine and blood ran down his legs, and then an otherworldly shriek that was in a range that Noah could barely comprehend swept past the Left Hand of God.

Noah could not hear the cry well enough because an illusory barrier of darkness had surrounded the warship and the seventy others below it, but it did not matter, apart from the Left Hand of God, the other warships seemed to lose the ability to remain in the air, and they began to crash.

The Ascended Rank Explorers must have made a move for the falling ships were arrested by large glowing palms, but Noah was not aware of what was happening around him for his endless gaze was still fixed on the Earth below, transfixed by that brief gaze that swept past him.

He could not see but he could comprehend. The Piece of Heaven was returning.

Noah turned and began to laugh, addressing the seven Ascended Explorers behind him,

"I did not speak falsehood, look below. It Comes… Madness… Truth… The end..m comes."

The seven Ascended watched the broken and bleeding Deific Explorer speak madness in a language they did not understand, and he fell to his knees where his blood turned to hissing snakes.

The broken figure struggled to speak before he exploded into hundreds of snakes that soon turned to ash and vanished.

This same thing happened to nearly two million Explorers across the seventy warships except for those in the Left Hand of God that was spared this grim fate.

The seven Ascended did not care about those they lost, their gaze fixed on the earth below and the piece of heaven that had appeared once more.