The Primordial Record
chapter-1075

A voice whispered across the expanse, "Who has known glory like this.... Let them show themselves, or forever remain silent."

"My Queen..."

Due to its evolution being more ordered than an average Calamity, its merger with a Temple Maiden, and because the Shiik was the first of its kind, crafted by the hands of Rowan, a Creator without peer, its evolution was different from any Calamity God in history. It was unique, the only one that was, is and to be.

Instead of tentacles and a thousand eyes filled with madness, the body of the Shiik slimmed down, flesh replacing chitin, and finger replacing claws, a series of sickening squelching noises as flesh reorganized itself and loud cracking rackets as bones were remade filled the air, and when it was over, a female form standing more than a hundred miles tall was revealed.

The Shiik was majestic, a queen whose presence would rival a universe, and bring all to their knees. Jet black skin that glinted like marbles with vivid red tattoos covering her entire body like a bodysuit. The nails on her hand were sharpened to needlepoint and glowing red like a dying star. Her long red hair flowed like a python, coiling across her feet and lifting her into the air.

The darkness of the Calamity suns bathed her, placing a crown of seven bleeding eyes on her forehead, and when she opened her eyes, they were filled with life and curiosity with no hint of madness, and standing before her was a powerful figure with multiple green fox tails with hands outstretched, the Undying.

"Art thou my queen promised?"

The Shiik ignored the figure and his questions and lowered herself to the ground, gracefully walking past him, her majesty undeniable.

She looked at the world before her. Under the light of the Calamity suns, the world before her had transformed into one of madness, massive eldritch beings whose size defied meaning and whose shape was incomprehensible appeared in their multitude. Their powers were so great they burned the darkness with a foul glow, emitting colors impossible to be found in a lower dimension. Madness reigned, yet they were all leashed.

Above them all were seven Calamities who held the leash.

The air seethes with power as foul cries that echo across eternity reverberate through the warped realm. The shiik looked down at her feet, and stretching for eternity was a field of skulls from all creatures that had ever existed in this realm and they were infinite in number, stretching back to a time when nothing was supposed to exist.

The skulls cried out, their voices so loud it drowned the sounds emerging from the countless powerful Calamities that rove the corrupted void.

All of them weeping blood, and the blood came crashing to the earth, a flood, a cataclysm, a calamity.

It was this blood that fueled the endless tides of calamity that would arise in the lower continent any time any Explorer released a whiff of Ascendant energy. This was the root of the current state of power in the Realm of Doom Star, the dead whose souls could never rest. Rowan was horrified. These poor souls had been tortured for infinities without number.

The Shiik spread her hands wide and the endless flood of blood rose like threads and linked to her tattoos, and she appeared to become the center of a grand web, her dress woven from the stuff of nightmares, and the tears of pain from an infinite amount of souls.

"My Queen... Thou At Beautiful... My Yearning Grows, and My Darkness I Shall Give, Freely In Communion. Give Me Your Hand And Let The Heavens Shake."

The Shiik looked at the immensity of the grandeur that was being offered to her, and she turned away and began to descend toward the lower realms.

"I once heard in a dream that I had at my birth," the Shiik spoke, her voice more lovely than the sound of a tambourine, "that there would come a day when my hands shall pull down the suns from the sky, yet I stand at the sky, and I see none. This is not how it should be... My throne shall be claimed by my hands!"

The threads of Calamity slowly peeled away from her skin as she broke past the threshold and proceeded to the lower realms, yet her glory shone like a red sun in the sky, and every eye who could, looked at the dark heavens and saw a new scarlet sun arising.

"My Queen, your throne awaits you, anytime you seek to rise and claim it."

The fading figure of the Undying looked down at her as she disappeared into the distance before he turned around and faded into nothingness.

R

The moment the Shiik went past the threshold, the change in reality began to reverse itself. The Calamity Suns vanished and the Ascendant Suns took their place. Below the threshold no one could observe the changes that happened anytime Ascendancy and Calamity traded places, they only knew that the seven Calamity Suns vanished and were replaced by the sun of the Ascendant.

As she fell her body was covered by a dark cloud covering her from sight, from the cloud emerged Rowan in the shape of a golden arrow who shot in another direction, leaving the Shiik to walk the path he had set out for her. The revelation he had uncovered made such a move to become necessary.

In the threshold above, the Ascendants returned to their previous form, and all knowledge of what happened was gone from their mind, they only knew that one of their number, a glorious Ascendant who took the moniker of Divine, had perished in the battle against Calamity, and they mourned him.

In the descent into the lower continents, Rowan reviewed everything he had seen, and he shook his head in shock.

At first, he had thought the mortals were the fodder and Ascendants and Calamities were the chess pieces, but it would seem that he had overrated the value of an Ascendant/Calamities, they were not even aware that they were chess pieces, helpless pawns in the game of a mad

realm.

"Power without knowledge is useless, this is why I will always chase the Truth, for only in truth is there freedom."