Published at 29th of September 2026 8:57 am

Chapter 5787: Death and Progeny II

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The Caretaker told him nothing more!

Whatever was happening in the Vasiliou Elsedimension was still happening, and the frozen underworld had nothing else to give him until it finished. So Noah opened his eyes on the Glacial Mountain and stood.

The snow that had gathered on him while he was away slid off his shoulders in soft white sheets.

He looked around.

Behind him the golden monastery glowed, and the slope fell away below the shelf into grey. Snow kept coming, as it always did now, and he stood in it and turned the new page over in his thoughts.

THE REMINISCING WIDOW.

A message to carry, an unread scroll of ice, and a woman who wore Atlas’s ring. He would have to decide when to begin, and how, and how much of it to tell the old man in his other ring.

None of those were small questions.

Then he blinked, because someone was standing behind him!

Verys had not moved! The whole time, the Legacy Keeper had stood a few paces behind him on the shelf, hands clasped, cloak pulled close, as still as a statue left out in the storm. There was snow piled on his shoulders an inch deep, and he had not brushed it off!

Noah looked at him, and remembered, belatedly, that there was a sparring session in a few hours.

A sparring session he had agreed to and then not bothered to learn a single thing about.

Who exactly would he be facing? Beings on the road to Immensity, fine, but how far along that road? Were they down under five hundred in their attributes? Or did having a Root push them higher?

"What can you tell me," Noah said, "about those in this Legacy who have Roots?"

Verys smiled, and bowed, and the snow fell off his shoulders at last.

"It would be my pleasure, Sir." He straightened. "Would you walk with me?"

He rose off the shelf, lifting into the air as easily as a man stepping off a stair, and Noah rose alongside him.

From above the Glacial Mountain, the Legacy of THE Acharya of Immensity went on forever!

Noah had seen it once already, arriving at Poona’s side. Now he looked. Mountains rose in every direction as far as sight could go, each one a sealed Elsedimension grown into the shape of a peak, some white with snow like his own, some black and glasy, some green, one burning a slow sullen red from summit to root. Well, snow pervaded all of them regardless.

Between them, far below, the ground was rivers! Broad, winding rivers of purple and gold, braiding and parting and braiding again across the whole floor of the Legacy, shining up through the falling snow.

Existential Conduits climbed out of that shining floor like the trunks of impossible trees, pillars of flowing authority rising past the mountains and away into the heights.

Conduit Lifeforms drifted everywhere between them, small incandescent things in their thousands, riding the currents, perching on the pillars, sipping from the authority that ran through them. A flock of them swept past Noah close enough to touch, bright and chiming, and vanished into the snow!

And above it all hung domains.

Dimensions and Observable Existences floated in the sky of the Legacy by the thousands, each one turning slowly on its own axis, glittering through the snowfall like lanterns hung over a festival that had been going on since before memory. Some were close enough that Noah could make out oceans on them! Others were only sparks.

Verys led him out over the purple and gold rivers, unhurried, as if he had walked this road ten thousand times, which he probably had.

"Sir asked about the Roots," the Keeper said. "To understand them, it helps to understand where most of them come from."

"When Those Who Remain write sentences into lesser things, or lie with Provenance Lifeforms, they produce Descendants. Some of those Descendants are fairly powerful." Verys glanced down at a mountain passing beneath them, black and glassy.

"But when Immense Ones lie with each other, what arises is something far more terrifying and very rare. Among those rarities, some of those children are born with a Root already in them. An Inherent Root of Immensity."

Noah looked at him. "Born with it?"

"Born with it, Sir. Imagine the genetic material of two Immense Ones making up the whole of your weavings." Verys smiled faintly.

"What a child like that can inherit has no ceiling. Some inherit more than others, of course. Two parents of the same greatness do not always make two children of the same greatness."

"And the ones who inherit less?"

"If they are grand enough, and if they are born with an Inherent Root, they stay within their parents’ Legacy, where they can grow in safety. If they are not..."

Verys spread one webbed hand. "They go out into existence. Across Dimensions and Observable Existences. They are encouraged to found Lineages of their own, and breed Descendants, and wait, and see whether something grand might arise from their blood in some later generation."

Noah thought about that. About the Vheldrani, twelve self-made beings in the low two hundreds, sent to pick a dead man’s bones on an Immense One’s errand.

About the Vasiliou, hunted for generations, and all the other Provenance Lineages that had drifted through his road like leaves.

"So that is what a Provenance Lineage is," he said.

"Some of them, Sir. A few Descendants who found each other and built their Provenance up across the ages, and never quite made it into a Root."

The Keeper’s large dark eyes were thoughtful. "Some of them are lucky. Existence has accidents in it, and sometimes an accident happens in the blood, and a genius rises out of a Lineage that had no business producing one. When that happens, and the genius forms a Root, the whole Lineage earns the right to live in a Legacy again."

Noah thought of the people he had carried here.

"You, Sir, have brought in a few beings who do not have Roots," Verys went on, as if he had heard the thought. "But it is within your allowable limit."

"What is the allowable limit?"

"A few hundred should be fine, Sir. Whatever family and servants you choose to keep."

A few hundred!

"But the ones you will spar with in a few hours," Verys said, "are mostly Progeny. Children of Immense Ones, born with their Roots. Very few are like you, or like Sir Achilles, who formed a Root themselves."

He slowed, and his voice dropped, as a storyteller’s voice drops before the part of a story that matters. "Among them, there are three you should watch for."

"Who?"

"The first is Sir Dravos. Progeny of THE Ashen Cantor."

A glance at a mountain burning sullen red in the distance. "His Root is Physical. The second is Sir Batiatus. Progeny of THE Hollow Choir, and he should hold a Conceptual Root."

Noah almost smiled!

"And the third?"

Verys did not answer at once! They were passing between two Existential Conduits, the pillars rising on either side of them like the doorposts of some enormous hall, and the Keeper waited until they had come out the other side.

"Ma’am Minerva..." he said. "Her mother is an Immense One with a gaze as green as early spring. Her Root is Conceptual. Everyone in this Legacy expects that when this Age ends, she is one of the few who is meant to be standing as an Immense One in the next."

He paused. "Others at her stage of power will not be at the sparring at all. They have earned the right to stay away. Minerva has earned it too. She is coming anyway as she seems very...enthusiastic for battles."

A gaze as green as early spring!

Noah kept his face exactly as it was. But he remembered, very clearly, a voice with a verdant weight to it, spoken over his frozen body in Moriarty’s hall. A voice that had talked about him, and about what he might be.

"And you know all of this how?" he said.

Verys bowed slightly as they flew, and something that was very nearly mischief crept into his calm face.

"Legacy Keepers like me have our own network, Sir. We love to gossip about the goings-on of the Legacy. It is one of the few pleasures of the position."

He looked up at the falling snow. "And since the snow began to fall, a great many things have begun to happen! You, Sir, are one of the more recent pieces of gossip."

...!

Noah raised his brows!

"You gossiped about me?"

"Of course not, Sir." Verys bowed again, deeper, the very picture of respect. "But Tatiana did. And of course Ma’am Poona is very talkative. The other Immense Ones of her standing tend to stay away from her for exactly that reason among others, so she has a great deal of time to talk to those of us who cannot leave."

He straightened, and his wet-bright eyes were perfectly innocent!

"She...may have mentioned a few things regarding you."

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