The Primordial Record

Rowan's dimensional soul neared reality, and his timing was correct; about now, his dimensional flesh was about to meet with Seed, and Maeve would be killed not long after.

Even though he tried not to think about it, not interfering in what was to come was difficult. All his plans, everything he had achieved, and his present state would be lost if he could not access the Memory of Primordial Life.

Just because he knew the direction the future was going to take did not mean he would be able to change it; he did not have that power, not yet. What had happened was so monumental, reaching across countless dimensions and affecting the benefits of so many powerful individuals, including the Primordials, that Rowan could not bear the weight of changing the future; he could only endure.

If there was ever a day in the future that he could bear the weight of changing the past, even when it involved Primordials, Rowan wondered if he would be free by then.

'An odd sentiment,' he thought, 'but reality was strange, everything made sense in one moment and then in the next, it was all madness.'

Well, all of that did not matter anymore; he had sounded the call of war, and the actions of Seed and Elura led to this event, but that was only on the surface, Rowan believed.

'There are no coincidences.'

He gained his Tree of Desire by connecting to a core ability of his Eldar bloodline and probability bent to his Will. In this case, Rowan had been the one to pull the trigger for war, but he was not the one who placed the gun in his hand. Rowan believed that all of this, no matter how random it all was, could be traced to a Primordial.

The Primordial of Life.

This conflict, which was about to erupt all over reality, would bring devastation, but it would ultimately benefit the Primordials the most because it would bring them closer to the prize they had been craving before the dawn of the Primordial Era.

Seed had told him that the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. It may not sound very sensible initially, but peering deeper into the meaning behind these words, I saw that there was so much to pull from them.

From the beginning, certain patterns always repeated themselves, and it did not matter how quickly he grew or the heights that he reached; those patterns always re-emerged, as if it were a natural law of nature, the Truth behind it all.

Rowan knew that he was not conversant with all the truths about reality, and maybe when he reached the level of a Primordial, he never would, but what he did know was that he had studied the structure of power that governed reality, the Supreme Circles, a Supreme technique that Seed had given to him.

The Supreme Circle contained all the laws of power of this Era, from the first stirring of Aether in the heart of a mortal to the moment that took the first step upon the Paths of Immortality.

It was the sublimation of this entirety of reality, and Rowan was awed by its power and majesty when he first witnessed it. That awe had grown as he studied and replicated it, finding that with all of his wisdom and strength, the Supreme Circles possessed areas that he could not understand, and he had to cheat just to replicate its functions.

This exercise taught Rowan everything he knew about the present state of existence and showed him the pattern that connected all things. However, he could not have made any connection between the importance of that pattern and what the Primordials sought because he was missing a crucial piece of the puzzle, or rather, from the beginning, he had been wrong about the roles of Primordials in reality.

The Primordials did not create this reality or the Nothingness surrounding it; they had claimed it for themselves.

He did not know the forms a Primordial would take before entering reality, or if he could even comprehend the sort of creatures they were before they took the name Primordials, but from the beginning, when the Primordial Record had given him a hint about the Origin of Primordials, he could never understand the significance.

Rowan remembered when he summoned the Lost Flames, the Primordial Record had stated:

The Lost Flame: Before Time and Space were born, Asteraoth claimed Light from the First Flame and left the burning flame without light for countless eternities.

Asteraoth became Light.

In the twilight of the Primordial Era, Endirius stole what was hidden deep in the bowels of the Primordial and claimed the Flames themselves.

Endirius became the Ruler of Fire.

Yet Endirius saw something more in the Flames, a hidden spark once thought to be lost, ignored even by the Primordial, but Endirius saw promise and great power in this spark.

To hide this great discovery, Endirius separated this spark into six forms. You now control the first of that form.

Take heed, Endirius' gaze searches for you.

So many truths were hidden here in plain sight, but Rowan had no means of understanding them until he reached this level.

A single sentence resolved one of the queries in his heart— Asteraoth became Light! Primordial Light!

Light was not the power of a Primordial; it was never theirs in the first place. Before finding this reality and all the power it contained, Asteraoth was something else, and those things did not have any description that could be found in reality because they had never been part of it in the first place. Everything of the Primordials was taken.

When he met Caine and Shamaran after leaving Doom Star, the mad Old One had spoken certain words that Rowan now fully understood.

Caine had said he was old, and therefore, he had seen things that Shamaran was not aware of. He had claimed that the Primordials had robbed him of his prize, and Rowan understood that for an Old One, the greatest prize they could ever attain was the rank of a Primordial, to become the concept that governed reality itself.

'Caine was there,' Rowan deduced, 'when the Primordials had first arrived, and he had promised a piece of the book, but he had been betrayed and cast aside, whatever he was, he was not as powerful as the beings who had seized the reins of power, and perhaps his pride became his downfall thinking that there could ever be a common ground between the wolf and a sheep.

Rowan was determined to seize all of these resolutions from Caine's soul, but he felt that he had basically gotten the overall pattern correct.

Primordial Essence was not the first thing that was stolen from reality; the first item that was stolen was the fundamental concepts that bound reality together, and if Rowan was correct, this had been the first necessary step that the Primordials used to gain access to reality's essence or Primordial Essence. From this essence, there was one thing left to take…

What was it that was left to take away?

Rowan saw the pattern behind reality, he had been shown, he had learned over the years, and so he could speculate that if the concept of reality was the bones and flesh, then Primordial Essence was its blood and vitality, then what was left could only be the soul.

The Primordials were searching for the soul of reality, its last and most precious component.