THE Strand of Broken Scales was aptly named.

Noah had traveled enough terrain across enough domains to appreciate when a place had earned its designation rather than been assigned one, and this stretch of coast and ancient forest had earned it.

The rock formations along the waterline had the fractured quality of surfaces that had been subjected to more force than they were built to contain, the breaks clean in some places and jagged in others.

The forest floor was no different. Roots broke through the dark soil in configurations that suggested the growth underneath was competing rather than cooperating, each system pressing against the others for the same limited substrate, the result a terrain that was beautiful and treacherous in the same motion.

He had always liked places like this.

There was an honesty to some places. It asked you to be present, and in return it rewarded the presence.

Eon moved alongside him through the ancient trees with a composure that had resettled after the beach, her golden Source expression stable and close against her figure, her eyes tracking the surrounding growth with focused awareness. She was adapting quickly!

A Silurian Paleozoic entity who had been stripped to her Source and had spent the preceding hours hunting, eating, and navigating the amplified emotional terrain of THE Source Lands without losing her coherence was not doing poorly.

He had also noticed that her figure moved through the forest with a quality this place had no interest in muting.

He redirected his attention to the terrain ahead.

The crabs’ information had been accurate. The Galdr Source pressure ahead had been building against his perception for the last several minutes, the dense obsidian warmth of it distinct from the Seidr Sources scattered through the surrounding forest, and he placed the cluster at approximately half a mile from their current position as their images became visible through the surrounding infinity.

Velociraptors. A group of Seidr ones surrounding a Galdr Source at their center, the arrangement of a predator pack organized around the most powerful member.

His existence got ready.

He had been thinking about long range.

The physical approach had served him well against the Utahraptor. He had no complaints about it. The direct engagement, his hands and feet carrying his Galdr Source through the Infinity-coated strikes, the rolling continuous movement that kept his position unpredictable... it worked, and he liked the directness of it, the confirmation that came with the impact of Source against Source in physical contact.

But he was also a being who had spent considerable time developing expressions of power that operated at distances exceeding arm’s reach, and THE Source Lands had not stripped that preference from him along with his Hadean physiology.

He stopped walking.

Eon stopped beside him without requiring an explanation.

He reached inward and found the reserves of Infinity that had been building through the consumption of the honey badger and the Utahraptor and the cave creature, the Galdr Source density of his expression higher than it had been at arrival in the specific way that it kept being higher than it had been at arrival, each battle and each consumption deepening the viscous concentration of what he was carrying.

He gathered from those reserves with the deliberate attention of a being constructing something that required precision rather than volume.

A singularity.

Not large. The singularity he was constructing was the size of a fist, compressed obsidian Infinity threaded through with the specific expression of his Galdr Source, the two substances combining under the Tongue’s direction into a configuration that held the potential energy of a sustained lightning discharge in the compressed patience of something waiting to be told it could become what it was built to be.

He held it between his palms.

He whispered.

"Sever."

HUUM!

The singularity left his hands at a velocity that the space between his palms and the treeline ahead had no framework for containing, the compressed obsidian Infinity extending into a tendril of lightning that moved through the forest canopy and the obstructing growth and the ambient dark of the spaces between trees.

He began walking.

BOOM!

From the clearing ahead, the sounds arrived. A sharp crack of lightning contact. Then another. Then the cascading sequence of a chain discharge as the first impact propagated its energy laterally to the nearest available Source expressions, which were the Seidr Velociraptors packed around the Galdr at the clearing’s center, each one receiving the chain in the specific sequence of targets that had not seen the attack coming and had therefore not moved.

A chained lightning strike!

The Galdr Source Velociraptor roared.

He heard the earth responding to it, the ground around the clearing rising in sharp formations as the creature’s Source expression drove into the surrounding terrain to form a barrier!

The lightning pierced through.

He heard Persevere. Then Persevere again. Then again, the roar containing less each time, the Primordial Tongue’s letter arriving from a smaller reserve with each successive use, the specific diminishing quality of a word being spent faster than it was replenishing.

By the time he and Eon reached the clearing, the scene had finished resolving itself.

Scorched Seidr Velociraptors were scattered across the clearing floor in the still configurations. The earth formations the Galdr Source had raised stood as misshapen evidence of a defense that had not been sufficient.

At the center, the Galdr Source Velociraptor itself was on the ground, its body trembling!

Its eyes found Noah as he walked into the clearing, and what was in those eyes was hatred in the pure unfiltered form this place amplified to its maximum expression.

Noah crouched in front of it.

He looked at it for a moment.

He raised his hand and slashed sideways!

HUUM!

The motion was clean and final.

"Existence is unfair." He held the creature’s gaze until the light left it. "Apologies."

HUUM!

The fragment rose from the Galdr Source Velociraptor’s broken expression, obsidian and faintly luminous, drifting upward with the patient certainty of something that knew it was being claimed.

|Second Fragment of the Letter Persevere obtained. Two of five.|

|The Galdr Velociraptor used Persevere three times before collapse. First Utahraptor required four cycles. Either your Sever expression is more efficient than your physical approach, or this individual had a shallower reserve to draw from.|

|Satiety status: 97%. The surrounding Seidr Velociraptors represent approximately 8% recovery each. The Galdr Source body will provide significantly more.|

Noah straightened and looked at the available consumption around him.

He looked at Eon.

"Eat." He gestured at the surrounding scorched Seidr Velociraptors. "Take your time with it."

He looked at the Galdr Source body at the clearing’s center and then back at her.

"That one is yours."

She looked at him and nodded lightly.

Ge sat against one of the earth formations the creature had raised and began his own consumption from the nearest Seidr body. "A Galdr Source consumed in full will help you attain Galdr Source quicker..."

He watched her process this.

She moved toward the Galdr Source Velociraptor body without further comment, and Noah returned to his own consumption, and the clearing was quiet except for the sounds of two existences doing what THE Source Lands required of them.

He smiled as he looked at Eon.

One had to treat their woman well.

This remained true regardless of which iteration of existence one was currently inhabiting, and Noah had never found reason to argue with it!