The Primordial Record

Chapter 926 The Thousand Year Wish

Rowan's great luck had brought him to the side of this grass and it would seem that he would have to watch the grass fade.

At that time Rowan had almost walked past it, this grass was nothing among the billion other tasks he was pursuing at the same time, but something about the fragility of this grass and how lucky he was to be here at just the right time to find it was the trigger that shook him from his apathy.

It was at this moment that Rowan decided that he would have to change. When he was inside the universe, a mind that could cover a billion places at once was needed, but outside the universe, he would have to focus, no longer at the top of the food chain, he would have to be careful, his Hive Mind gave him a sense of power that was just not the case when he came out of the universe.

He needed to save this grass.

His consciousness went through a million options that might have had the chance of saving it, but all would require more time than the fragile lifespan of the grass was willing to give him. He had barely lived past forty years at that time and his Thousand Year Wish was still centuries in the future and was not even among his considerations, but then he felt a brand new connection with the bluegrass.

Something about its nature was synchronized with his bloodline and for the first time since he came into contact with this mysterious bloodline, it reached across to his consciousness and he heard its voice like the whisper of the breeze through the leaves of a tree. It spoke of desire and the wish to save a life that should have never existed. This was extremely important to the Tree of Desire because events like this were the only way to evolve this bloodline, even with all of Rowan's power, he could not manufacture moments like this, and anyone he came across was special.

The desire for this miracle pushed his bloodline to alter a portion of its ability to suit this event.

Rowan's thousand wishes could now be used in advance, but as a price, the power of the wish would be cut in half, and he would never be able to leave the spot he made the wish from until the duration of the thousand years had passed. This change alone transformed the utility of this ability, as he could now technically use this ability anytime he wanted, and the only price was a reduction in power and loss of mobility.

It took a moment for him to think about his choices. A thousand years for him was no longer such an extended period of time, barely a blink in his total lifespan.

He had lived a rather hectic life since the moment he had Transmigrated into Trion, battle after battle he had fought with no space to find himself, no time to look inside his being and examine all the consequences of his actions.

Sitting here for a thousand years beside a grass he was not sure would survive for that long after he had saved it with a precious wish seemed foolish, but somehow Rowan found himself drawn to this choice.

Beyond the fact that his bloodline needed this plant to evolve, for him this was a choice that was not steeped in deception or one where he sought to make a profit, he was just keeping alive a miracle that would most likely never be repeated until perhaps the end of time inside this place of death.

There was a possibility he would find other such miracles in the future, and if he wanted he could ignore this plant and move on, but Rowan decided to stay put.

Rowan had made his choice and the sight of his Thousand Year Wish being realized was one he would not quickly forget. The first time he used an active ability of this bloodline amazed him.

Behind him, a massive tree that seemed to scrape the heavens and whose roots bridged a sea of darkness and light appeared, and a glorious ray of light that was more like an expression of an unknown dream or a figment of a god's imagination that had been forgotten swept past him emerging from its uncountable leaves, and Rowan had shuddered. He had never felt anything like this before. Luckily he had covered the entire region for millions of miles with a Ward to block out sight or sound, or the Tree of Desire would have been seen throughout the frozen waste.

This light… This expression of a forgotten memory had entered the wilting bluegrass and it gave it new life. Making an impossibility to become possible.

The memory of that day played through his memory and Rowan smiled, it had been a while since he was able to reflect like this on a memory, his previous Hive Mind made such a thing impossible.

Looking at the heavens, Rowan saw the mouths of the sisters moving, he called them sisters because they looked alike but did not have exact features, this was always the case for family. Where were their bodies, he idly wondered.

Although others may hear screams from the sisters, what Rowan heard was a message. It was jumbled of course at best and indecipherable at worst.

His gifts of tongues helped him to understand the language spoken by the sisters and with his many consciousnesses he had taken the time to piece together the cries of the sisters during the last thousand years. It was a dull and thankless work because he suspected that maybe the sisters were once sane before, but after such a long time, they had truly gone mad, and judging the intent of madness was a difficult undertaking. He had listened and deciphered their words, and he did not know if what he learned was important, but it was knowledge of a time ancient, and Rowan's Will made him understand that the sisters spoke truth.

After the first century, he thought that he had understood all that the message was going to deliver, but then he noticed that after a while, the words changed and a new message was sent forward, and this new message was replayed again and again in their cries, and Rowan now used to their madness deciphered it more quickly, then it did not take long for the pattern to change and a new message was given, this time it took eighty years.

As time went by, the frequency by which this message changed increased and after a few more centuries, Rowan was receiving a new message almost every decade. Thirty years ago, the messages were complete, and the sisters began their story from the beginning.

Rowan would like to believe that the sisters having found a listening ear that could understand their cries after all these endless years took the opportunity to converse with him, although as a result of this change, the past thousand years had become one of the most dangerous years in the entire frozen wastes as the cries of the sisters having increased caused the dangers of this road to be multiplied a dozen times over.

He was sure he was not the first to hear the message inside the cries of the sisters, but he doubted anyone would be able to decipher the meaning within due to certain unique properties that he controlled.

Rowan had chosen to create a book from the processed skin of the Frost Giant, as he found it a stimulating challenge to make something that would survive both in the frozen waste and outside of it, he partially succeeded.

He ended up making something that should exist for millions of years outside the frozen waste, and when he began to record the message of the sisters on its page, a change happened in the book. Its essence transformed. Every word he wrote of the sisters transformed the blue hide of the page into metal, and when he was done, he had a massive metal book with a thousand pages. Beside the body of Rowan was the book, and only its last page was still made from flesh. He had an intuition that if he recorded those last words, the cries of the sisters would end and they would finally be free to enter into the silence of death.

Many a night Rowan agonized about writing these final words, doing so would change the frozen waste forever. It would no longer be a land of death, but a place that would connect the many universes and all the higher dimensions. For the first time for who knew how long, the road to eternity would be open for all.

Such a decision would have far-reaching consequences for all involved.