The Primordial Record

Rowan was silent, his reply was only the ever-present grin his skull showed to the world, but his healing had begun to accelerate, strip after strip of muscle appearing on his gaunt frame as he began to fill up, his bones creaking as the marrows inside were refilled, and his damaged heart shivered before starting to beat. The concentration of Aetherium in his body had fallen and now he had begun to heal without any impediment, but his dimensional flesh was massive, and Rowan did not rush his healing, leaving that slight gap as a trap. Even the smallest of advantages could create unexpected changes in a battle like this.

Caine did not appear concerned about these changes in Rowan's flesh and he grinned as well, "You know when I first met you, I was amused because I knew at the end I would be the one to win. Looking back now, I realized how foolish I was. You had surprised me with the Forge crafted from the remnants of a seventh-dimensional world, but you see, I thought I knew a secret that everyone else should know and I was astonished at first that you could be so dense, somehow you were ignorant of it. How laughable is that?"

"This is what is known, Romion, from the beginning of time itself. It is impossible to rid yourself of the Will of a Primordial, that Shadow Third was correct about you; the ignorant would easily exceed their limits if they are unaware of the limitations. You are a man who flew unaware that you would need wings and hollow bones. I wonder at the end, did that Shadow despair for not teaching you what is considered common sense to all?"

Rowan brought up his healing hand that was now being slowly covered by skin, "I beg to differ, ridding myself of the Will of Chaos was easier than killing you."

Caine gritted his teeth, "I can see that, and it is impossible! The touch of a Primordial reaches depths of your being that you cannot even imagine, and the only explanation I can surmise for such a result was that you were still mortal when you rid yourself of the influence of Chaos. Your luck is truly unimaginable. To find the single thing that could change everything."

Shaking his head with a clear look of astonishment on his face Caine groaned, "Who would have thought that the only thing that could rid the soul of the touch of a Primordial should be performed while they were mortal, but hahaha, things are not still so simple. What sort of a mortal would have the strength to fight against the Will of a Primordial?"

Caine spat, what emerged from his mouth was a diseased mass that crawled on the ground like a spider, dozens of yellow eyes sprouting from the body of the creature, and the emanations of power from it were equal to those of a God Emperor! The gaze of Caine followed the tiny creature with a weird glow in his eyes, as it shrieked and tried to escape from the two titans before it.

"Do you know what I've been trying to accomplish since the last time we met? I think you can guess it from what I have told you so far, but what I was trying to do was to find a mortal that was strong enough to fight off the Will of a Primordial."

The long hand from Caine began to box the creature. Anytime it tried to escape, Caine found a way to push it back, "I started with the most talented of mortals, the strongest amongst them with a nearly hundred percent chance that they would become immortals in the future. I bought them from a thousand universes, they numbered in the tens of millions, and I placed them in a space where they could freely observe the Wills inside their bodies, and there were certain… incentives to make them pursue the path of ridding their bodies of those Wills, they all failed."

A long tongue suddenly surged out of Caine's mouth and snapped up the crawling creature who had despaired from surviving the games of Caine, returning the shrieking creature to his mouth, he began to chew in relish, faint cries of pain emerged from his mouth as he slowly consumed the unknown creature, "I thought that perhaps I was wrong in my approach, I should not pick out the strongest but the wisest, those still failed to succeed, even with all my incentives, the Will ate them to pieces, and then I went for the weakest of mortals, the cruel, the meek, the brave, the coward, all failed my test. I made the mortals as strong as Titans, but they crumbled like sand, made them formless like air but they shattered to ashes, I gave…"

Caine fell to silence, and then he began speaking without any indication, "Before long I began to empty universes of all mortal creatures inside them, and perhaps it was when I had emptied nearly a hundred universes and caused a war that is currently ravaging the great darkness that I realized that there cannot be a second mortal like you, and with what I have witnessed here today, I firmly believe in this theory."

Rowan had finished healing, his eight-foot body had filled up with muscles and his skin had covered his exposed flesh. His long diamond-like hair that touched his waist flowed around with an invisible wind and his prismatic eyes, glowing with every color in creation fixed on Caine.

Even the eyes of this being that were older than even what most gods could conceptually light up when he saw the beauty of Rowan.

"Truly, you are the most beautiful mortal that has ever lived. A beauty like yours deserves to be worshiped."

"I do not need worship." Rowan stood up, his feet resting on the coils of the hovering Primordial Ouroboros Serpents, and his hands that were previously empty held an invisible force that was slowly growing in might. Rowan was on the edge of summoning his Destroyer.

Caine retreated once more with an annoyed grunt, "I told you before, your threat to me is no more. I always seek to prune out the grass that grows too tall in my father's vineyard, and you are no longer among them. I do not wish to fight you Romion, I am only here to bargain. A secret for a secret. A weapon for a weapon. An alliance if you will, and trust me, where you are about to step foot into, is a place where you will need every advantage you can hold."

Rowan frowned, "Why should I ever trust a being like you."

Caine scratched his head, "Well to be quite blunt, you will have no choice but to do so. Wait… wait, I know that look in your eyes, Romion, you are about to attack, let me tell you about the secrets of the many universes and the Primes who hold everything in their palms, and then you will know the necessity of an alliance."

For the next three days, Caine did not stop talking and the frown on Rowan's face went deeper, and when he finally finished his exposition, Rowan remained silent for hours, and Caine seemed content to let him think.

Finally, he spoke, "Let us make a bargain Caine."

The Great Betrayer grinned, "You shall not regret this… brother."