The Cancellation had closed the asking, and the Erasure would close the having asked. It would remove the question and everything it had ever produced from the past.

The branch of the Tree that the woman by the stream had founded would not have happened. The hundred and forty thousand years of compounding habit, the order, the faculty, the instrument, the word, the song, the signature, the propagation across one hundred and three branches, the slow, gentle decline in the Cancellation’s effectiveness, all of it would unhappen.

Holding the Erasure in his hand, the Painter did not make a move; he just continued looking at the board.

The piece was a small thing in the Painter’s shrouded hand, as most of the great pieces on the board were small; this was a thing Eos had learned during the first age.

Size on the board was not a function of importance; size on the board was a function of the dimensions the piece operated through, and a piece that operated through few dimensions was large and visible, and a piece that operated through many dimensions was small and almost not there.

A drop of water crushes a star, and an ocean of it could barely move a tree. This was the mental image that was painted when Eos observed this process, and he thought it was a rather fascinating way to hide what you do not want your enemy to see.

The Erasure was almost not there. It had the appearance, in the Painter’s hand, of a chip of stone, the color of nothing, and the chip was so small that even at the resolution at which Eos saw the board, he had to attend to it carefully to keep it in his perception.

And so, Eos shamelessly observes the piece. If the Painter was not displaying it, then Eos would not hold back in his observation.

No matter how quiet and gentle this game seemed from their side, it was deeply terrifying on so many levels that normal combat could not even touch.

The Painter held the piece for a long time without setting it down.

This was unusual. In all the moves the Painter had made in the first age and the early second age, the lift and the placement had been a single fluid gesture, a continuous motion that did not give the opponent time to adjust between the lift and the placement.

The Painter holding a piece in the air was the Painter giving Eos time, and the Painter never gave time without a reason.

Eos frowned as he considered why the Painter would be doing such a thing, and the answer came to him... it wanted him to make the first move; this was an open invitation.

This was not a generous invitation. Eos would be a fool if he thought it was. This was the next move in the game, and the Painter lifting the Erasure and was now declining to place it was a question, and the question was: will you trade?

Eos understood the question and did not answer it for a long time.

The trade on offer was simple in shape and complicated in cost. If Eos surrendered the branch, if he closed the adro propagation himself, voluntarily, by some method of his own that did not require The Erasure, then the Painter would set The Erasure back down, unused, and the oldest piece would remain on the board, in reserve, for a future move.

If Eos did not surrender the branch, the Painter would place The Erasure, and the branch would unhappen, and the oldest piece would be spent, but the spending would cost Eos three Grand Cosmic Eras of substrate work and would teach the Painter, in the spending, the precise scope and resolution of the move it was undoing.

Eos frowned as he considered these two points. The first option preserved a piece on the Painter’s side of the board, and the second option preserved a piece on Eos’s side, but at the cost of a Grand Cosmic Era of work, and gave the Painter the intelligence of watching The Erasure operate in detail.

Eos considered both options for forty thousand Cosmic Eras while the Painter held the piece in the air.

If there was any consolation, it was that, all this time, Existence as a whole was largely free from their manipulation, although Eos knew that the Painter would not care for the changes that happened in such a short time.

However, for Eos, who still preserved the sanctity of his mortal heritage inside his being, giving all life forty thousand Cosmic Eras of stability was a great thing.

He took the little wins where he saw it, after all, for countless lives, even Primordials, this length of time was incredibly long in their perception, and even the souls of Old Ones may grow tired after this span of time had passed.

The Painter did not become impatient as it waited for Eos to make a choice.

Tenth-dimensional beings did not become impatient. But Eos noticed, at the seventeen-thousandth Cosmic Era of his consideration, a faint rhythm in the way the Painter held its hand, a small periodic adjustment of the grip on the piece, and he understood, watching the rhythm, that the Painter was bored. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

He blinked... the Painter was bored!

This was the first emotion Eos had ever read off the Painter that had not been one of the calculated emotions the Painter had chosen to show him.

Eos knew that boredom was not a calculated emotion. Boredom was an artifact of being who the Painter actually was, and the Painter had let it slip because the Painter had grown comfortable enough in the second age to relax its surface.

In that single instant, Eos saw the reason why this tenth dimensional being would allow someone like him to grow and exist when it had a trillion trillion ways to kill Eos as a child, to unmake the concept of who he was even before he was born.

Eos noted this immediately, put it away, and did not let it shape his choice.

He chose at the forty-thousandth Cosmic Era, and he did not choose either choice.