Trying to write some lore linked to the contest (specifically paired to my proposal), describing the awakening of the queen.
Considering it is linked to a contest, I of course have no claims of it being official, although it could be later adapted to the background that Draig actually picks.
And done.
VICTORY, TOTAL A gigantic metal being drops down lifeless. towering spires collapse. Flames quenched.
SURPRISE, INCONCEIVABLE Food is wrong. Air is wrong. Water is wrong.
PAIN, EXCRUCIATING Vision blurry. Flesh burning. Enemy within.
FEAR, OVERWHELMING Approaching doom. Will to survive. Division. Loss.
DEATH, FINAL Light, no more.
DARKNESS, ETERNAL
ETERNAL?
Eons passed in eternal darkness after that fateful day, the Queen shrouded in the cold embrace of death.
Eons filled of broken memories and distant thoughts, barely connected.
Eons of dreams of stars, of strife and fight, of wind and air.
Eons of hunger, of eating, digesting, collecting –
AWAKENING, ALIVE?
Uncountable was the time passed, as nobody was alive to count. Yet finally the Queen stirred from its slumber. The caverns echoed with the watery splashes of the lake as consciousness and awareness started to come back. Memory was fragmented; only pieces, frozen instants, the link between which she had to infer. Victory, surprise, pain, fear and finally death. But before death, she remembered birth: she hid daughters in the depths of the planet, hoping that to survive.
And they did. She survived.
But in survival, the loss was great. Her mind was greatly diminished, vast hosts of knowledge lost. Of the stars mere dreams and of her former capabilities mere traces; only perhaps by finding the other parts of herself could she hope to piece together her former glory. Her form too was changed. She couldn’t recall what she used to look like, but she knew that she was now different. Adaptable, flowing, like water in the lake; no, she was the lake. Ripples and lights formed as she thought and for the first time she observed them. Waves and tendrils would protrude from the surface, reaching the shores and the walls, washing within her anything that could sate her hunger.
Feeding, yes, she had done that before. Memories of the slumber were faded, more distant and unclear than those from before her death, but she used to eat during the long sleep. There were fishes, small animals, mushrooms in the caves around the lake. She ate them all. And when nothing else was left, she turned on the rock itself, seeking nutrition. Eroding paths and holes and channels, stripping them of minerals. She had a feeling that it should have been harder, and yet even in her sleeping state she could feed herself with those materials. Living things, carbon, those were the things she assaulted first; pliable, energetic. But rare, terribly rare. However, to her mind carbon is little different from silicon, sulphur, phosphorus, iron. Chemistry works all the same and by nature or by necessity, she found itself skilled at weaving the elements in all their forms.
She now wandered with her mind to all the possibilities opened by this realization. How many things could she add or change in her sons, when the time comes; bones and skin of metal, organs of silicon, chemistry of sulphur. Heat, cold, hard, light, what could she not conquer with this freedom? Had she already done that before she dies, or had she changed so much? Was it perhaps this liquid form of her, mutable and adapting, that opened her mind to new possibilities? She couldn’t answer, but the question quickly fell aside as she revelled in her new skill. And she was indeed in a vast playground, for rock was everywhere.
Rock is everywhere.
A simple thought, a realization of a still young mind and yet a spark ignited. Rock is everywhere, and rock is food. She can shape rock, make it into a part of herself or sculpt it into new things. How much exist? She tried to recall. Memories of void filled her; voids dotted with giant spheres. On the surface, teeming with the easy pickings of inferior life, the focus of her attention, the important part. A mere skin covering rock, rock and metal and heat. How could she be so blind? Leaving so much stuff unpicked. How big is even a void sphere? She tried to imagine that, but she was still far too diminished to comprehend it; all she understood was that it was huge beyond comprehension. And understanding that, she felt ambition and a more familiar thing: hunger. She decided she would do what she had never done before, she would consume it all. The life, yes. And the rock, and the planet itself with all its mass, absorbed digested, moulded.
It would take time, however. And first, she needed help. She hadn’t created anything that wasn’t her yet, but she remembered things from before she died. A simple creature, a versatile base that could be evolved into more forms as she regained her primordial skills. A memory so clear, as if intentionally planted. And so, in the lake it formed, and from the shores the first Grub walked out to explore the surrounding, to discover, to bring food and knowledge. First of many, an army in being, devourers in service of the great maw: they will be the tools of ultimate assimilation she decided. In the end, all will be Grub.
After much toil, the surface was breached. Air, wind, warmth, memories rushed to the Queen. But amidst that, she felt something unexpected: a voice, talking in the distance. A fragment of her, somehow still alive and commanding her own creatures. The Queen then called her part, recalled her to be assimilated. But contrary to all sense, the fragment refused to comply. Worse: she made the same request to the Queen and then steeled herself against the Queen’s thoughts.
She toyed with the idea of neglecting this fact as a mere distraction, but she knew that her great plans would take a long, long time to succeed and a rogue cancerous fragment could delay them even more. Plus, who knows what useful pieces of the primordial mind the fragment might hold? No. She decided that order must be made within before than without; the rogue part of her must be subdued and she sent a final message before sealing her thoughts: “I am Alpha, you are Omega. I am first, you are last. I shall command over my body and mind, all of it, no matter the cost”.
And so it was war.
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Topic: Mutagenesis Team Thread | Alpha Hive (Read 11038 times)