They embodied a fundamental cosmic paradox and the unity of opposing forces. The peculiar aura radiating from their very existence exerted an indescribable pull on Ghroth.
Instinctively, Ghroth longed to head toward the ancient nebula that had given birth to Nug and Yeb.
Yet just as it was about to adjust its course, a surge of madness far closer to the essence of its source, Azathoth, sent out a powerful summons from a remote star system.
That disturbance was the result of Nyarlathotep, using an Insect from Shaggai ritual to attempt the summoning of an utterly insignificant fragment of Azathoth's power.
To Ghroth, this call from the origin was like an addict catching the scent of the most exquisite drug. In an instant, it eclipsed all interest in Nug and Yeb and drew it irresistibly in that direction.
The outcome was obvious.
Ghroth descended upon the planet of the Insect from Shaggai, bringing catastrophe in its wake.
And this time, Ghroth descended upon the Ice-Fire World.
"So that's how it was…"
Lo Quen felt a sudden clarity.
All the scattered clues finally linked together.
The black stone of the Ice-Fire World, which contained blood magic knowledge that guided the opposition of ice and fire and ultimately gave rise to the twins, had not come into existence from nothing.
It was, in all likelihood, a backup plan planted by Nyarlathotep, that chaos-loving "cosmic troublemaker."
Through the black stone, he projected the power of Nug and Yeb, influencing the people of the Ice-Fire World to perform rituals in their pursuit of power. In the end, this succeeded in summoning Ghroth, allowing the true Blasphemous Twins, hidden somewhere within a nebula, to escape destruction.
Lo Quen surmised that even if Ghroth wiped out this Ice-Fire World backup, as long as the real Nug and Yeb still existed, and as long as Nyarlathotep was willing, he could reproduce similar decoys anywhere else in the universe at any time. He could continue guiding Ghroth, that uncontrollable living catastrophe, toward whatever targets he wished to erase.
"Well played, Nyarlathotep. Using another's blade to kill, and shifting the disaster elsewhere."
Lo Quen sneered inwardly.
The Many-Faced God was elusive and inscrutable, his true body impossible to lock onto for now.
But the remnant soul of Ghroth had shown him the birthplace of the true Blasphemous Twins, Nug and Yeb, the pair that had first drawn the attention of the Judgment Star.
"In that case, I'll go pay a visit to the originals and see whether that troublemaker dares to show himself."
With a single thought, Lo Quen acted.
The vast body of the Starforger began to fade into intangibility. Starlight flowed around him as the power of [Celestial Radiance] wrapped around his entire form.
He locked onto the coordinates extracted from the deepest layers of Ghroth's memory.
A forbidden region at the unknown edge of the universe, shrouded in an eternal dark crimson nebula.
In the next moment, spacetime twisted and compressed around him.
His figure became a streak of starlight that pierced through dimensions, instantly breaking past the physical universe's speed limits as he shot toward his destination.
Stars blurred into flowing trails of light.
He passed through minefields formed by death pulsars, skirted ancient black holes capable of devouring light itself, and swept past nascent star systems where primitive life was just beginning to take shape.
On the superluminal scale of the cosmos, it was only an instant.
Ahead of Lo Quen, the color of the cosmic backdrop began to change, shifting from profound darkness to a deep crimson, like coagulated blood.
A dark red nebula of unimaginable scale filled Lo Quen's field of vision.
Violent currents of energy churned within it, exuding an eerie, unsettling presence.
Lo Quen slowed, and the Starforger Dragon's form gradually solidified at the nebula's outer edge.
His dragon pupils, forged from starlight, pierced through layers of turbulent energy haze, fixing on the very core of the nebula.
There, he saw the target of his journey.
Two intertwined shadows.
One was a deep green mass, endlessly proliferating and writhing, while the other was a grayish-brown presence that devoured all light and heat, steeped in the dead silence of all things reaching their end.
The deep green represented Nug, the infinite reproduction and corrupt vitality born of Shub-Niggurath.
The gray-brown represented Yeb, inheriting the ultimate stillness and annihilation brought forth by fragments of Yog-Sothoth's knowledge.
Their essences were fundamentally opposed, yet born from the same source, forming a strange equilibrium.
At the heart of the nebula, the two forces surged against and fused with one another, creating an endless cosmic spectacle.
Their mere existence caused subtle distortions in the surrounding space and the laws of physics.
"Nug and Yeb… are these the originals that drew Ghroth's attention, and indirectly led to the Ice-Fire World's tragedy spanning ten thousand years?"
Lo Quen, in his Starforger Dragon form, hovered silently beyond the nebula, studying these Outer God offspring that were still gestating or slumbering.
He could sense that they shared a similar inner core with the incomplete Ice-Fire Twin forcibly created by Jon and Ygritte.
But the beings before him were far older, closer to some fundamental law of the cosmos, and far more complete and natural.
Without the slightest hesitation, Lo Quen spewed forth stellar flame toward Nug and Yeb, dyeing the entire dark red nebula in radiant brilliance.
However, just as the blazing starfire was about to reach them,
the starry expanse itself let out a cry of unbearable strain.
In the next instant, space peeled away like shattered glass.
A darkness beyond the description of color, as though it had gathered all the shadows of the universe, instantly replaced the dark red nebula where Nug and Yeb resided.
Lo Quen's starfire, capable of destroying stars, plunged into that darkness and stirred only faint ripples in space.
Immediately after, a vast will saturated with suffocating fertility enveloped everything.
Merely sensing that presence was enough to drive any rational lifeform into maddened imaginings of life's origin and ultimate terror.
From the heart of that boundless darkness, a shape began to take form.
Countless writhing tentacles, dripping with primordial ichor.
Countless eyes opening and closing in the dark, filled with a motherly, all-embracing affection.
A supreme existence symbolizing all reproduction, abundance, and the dark source of life in the cosmos.
Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods who birthed countless progeny, descended here.
"Foolish… mortals…"
A will formed from the first cries of innumerable lives and the dying wails of the countless dead echoed directly within Lo Quen's consciousness, carrying unquestionable authority.
"Do you intend to destroy my nursery?"
Lo Quen looked on calmly.
Beside the all-encompassing darkness of Shub-Niggurath, space warped once more.
This time, it was not a covering of matter, but a restructuring of its very framework.
Countless light orbs gleaming with inhuman intelligence appeared out of nothing.
They assembled into a complex structure beyond three-dimensional comprehension, forming something that resembled a door, yet was not truly a door.
From this "door" flowed endless knowledge and pathways through time and space.
Fragments of countless histories washed across the battlefield.
Yog-Sothoth, the guardian and embodiment of spacetime itself, cast its gaze upon the scene.
Under the protection of these two supreme beings, Nug and Yeb released mocking waves of spiritual fluctuation.
Their figures flickered at the boundary between darkness and radiance, as though they were savoring Lo Quen's struggle like a trapped beast.