01-03-2017, 04:35 AM
The creatures in armor (I'm sure now that it's something they're wearing) keep on talking, long after the fires I set have begun to die. They talk about 'Primes', and 'Secondaries', and Omnilium. Still seated on the rubble, I listen in a vague, half-attentive sort of way, barely hearing them.
Mostly, I can't get over the fact that I'm just so small! Tiny, in fact. I'm smaller than one of my old body's toenails! It's no wonder my power feels choked off - it has only this stunted skin-mite-sized form to flow into! The power is still mine, though, the ancient force of a matchless cosmic catastrophe: I am it, and it is me, and we are I, even if I am no longer three. It would be impossible to separate us. Even in this sorry state, I'm still King Ghidorah, and while I may be trapped here without my wings, the armored idiots are talking about civilizations now, and warp-gates to other places.
Inconcievable outrage and lust for apocalyptic vengeance upon the smiling thief who did this to me aside, I may be able to have a very fulfilling time here after all.
There's something else, too.
I open one of my hands, and I see the first thing I've liked since arriving in this place. It's a many-colored orb of light, and if I didn't know better I would swear it was whispering promises.
(Promises are a grand idea - an expressed inevitability. I intend to make a lot of them.)
I study the Omnilium. With enough of it, supposedly, I can have anything I want. That's good, because for the first time in my countless eons of existence, I want more than my next meal, and the opportunity to boil someone else's dreams.
I can tell instinctively, though, that I'm going to need more of this new power in order to get what I desire - a lot more.
"I want my body back," I say out loud, reabsorbing the little the ball of raw potential into my dazzling golden scales, and interrupting a speech about some supposedly-wonderful empire which these bland fools want me to serve. They'd have about as much luck asking me to put this mocking insult of a false city back together.
I burn empires.
One of the armored figures starts to respond, but I cut them off, rising from my seat.
"In order to get it, I want more Omnilium."
The one who revealed his height to me earlier - and what an odd sensation, to be able to tell one of the tiny creatures I've trampled underfoot for so long apart from any of the others - says, "Well, if you come with us -"
"But first, now that I've been brought down to your pitiful level, I want to examine in excruciating exactitude precisely how you miniscule, scurrying hive-builders EXPIRE."
"Uhhh..."
All four of them stare, frozen.
In that moment, I unleash the golden lighting, a warbling, joyous cackle bubbling in my throat. The energy crackles and writhes as it erupts from my palms in spiralling arcs. There's a rhythym to it: a two-count while I summon the power. Another two-count, punctuated by the singing shriek of bolts of cosmic energy! A single beat, followed by another lash of my glorious golden fury! A three-count, and so it goes. The darting, leaping symphony of my power washes over them, and they try to evade, rolling and stumbling! Two try to run. Two of them kneel and fire back, little red blasts of light that splash harmlessly off my shining chest.
When my energy strikes them, the effect is more dramatic.
Armor cracks, blackening and bursting on contact, sending scorched shards flying. Bodies are blown backwards, skidding and rolling, leaking streaks of crimson from the fissures in their useless shells!
Only one gets away, fleeing into the featureless void.
I stalk over to one of the corpses, and after some fiddling with my new fingers, which are far more complex to operate than it looks like they should be, I rip its helmet off.
The face underneath resembles the reflection of my own that I glimpsed (such a precise word, that) earlier. A flat face with two eyes, rolling sightlessly, one small mouth occupying the lower portion, and a pronounced nose. It lacks my horns, and the ears are absurdly small and round, but even so, if it had my handsome, shining scales, we could almost be brothers.
Of course, if it had my scales it wouldn't be dead.
I walk over to another, and rip its helmet off as well, the clasps and buckles popping beneath my grip. This one has softer features, and different colored hair.
"What did you think you were going to do today?" I ask the corpse, baring my teeth in joyous savagery. "I'll bet this wasn't it, was it?"
It doesn't answer. It doesn't need to. I'm getting all sorts of ideas.
Before, when I brought worlds to ruin, one of my favorite parts of the experience was always the revelation, the moment when they understood. I was the end of the world, so many worlds, and in being that, I showed them just how little everything they valued truly meant. The ability to read moods seems to have deserted me, but there was a time when I could track decline of a civilization by the depths of their despair.
I ruined planets. I never really had the opportunity - or even the concept, except in rare cases where a world turned out to have a guardian that could match my stature - to ruin individuals. They were simply too small for me to take notice of them except as a group.It was how they reacted en-mass to the destruction of their works, their cities, and the biospheres that raised them up where the meat of the experience lay (not that ravaging those things wasn't tremendously fulfilling in its own right).
Now that I'm on their level, however, there are so many little differences, even among these three, who were clearly trying hard to look as similar as possible. Each one has a brain, like me: a perspective. It follows then that each one of these creatures contains a world for me to ruin. The differences are what makes each act of destruction special. Uniqueness, the loss of a thing that will never come again, is where the beauty of it lies.
I still want my body back - but now I think I'll have to find a way to switch between my original form and this one.
Ruining a planet one person at a time...
I'm going to have to make my next victim tell me about itself before I kill it.
Mostly, I can't get over the fact that I'm just so small! Tiny, in fact. I'm smaller than one of my old body's toenails! It's no wonder my power feels choked off - it has only this stunted skin-mite-sized form to flow into! The power is still mine, though, the ancient force of a matchless cosmic catastrophe: I am it, and it is me, and we are I, even if I am no longer three. It would be impossible to separate us. Even in this sorry state, I'm still King Ghidorah, and while I may be trapped here without my wings, the armored idiots are talking about civilizations now, and warp-gates to other places.
Inconcievable outrage and lust for apocalyptic vengeance upon the smiling thief who did this to me aside, I may be able to have a very fulfilling time here after all.
There's something else, too.
I open one of my hands, and I see the first thing I've liked since arriving in this place. It's a many-colored orb of light, and if I didn't know better I would swear it was whispering promises.
(Promises are a grand idea - an expressed inevitability. I intend to make a lot of them.)
I study the Omnilium. With enough of it, supposedly, I can have anything I want. That's good, because for the first time in my countless eons of existence, I want more than my next meal, and the opportunity to boil someone else's dreams.
I can tell instinctively, though, that I'm going to need more of this new power in order to get what I desire - a lot more.
"I want my body back," I say out loud, reabsorbing the little the ball of raw potential into my dazzling golden scales, and interrupting a speech about some supposedly-wonderful empire which these bland fools want me to serve. They'd have about as much luck asking me to put this mocking insult of a false city back together.
I burn empires.
One of the armored figures starts to respond, but I cut them off, rising from my seat.
"In order to get it, I want more Omnilium."
The one who revealed his height to me earlier - and what an odd sensation, to be able to tell one of the tiny creatures I've trampled underfoot for so long apart from any of the others - says, "Well, if you come with us -"
"But first, now that I've been brought down to your pitiful level, I want to examine in excruciating exactitude precisely how you miniscule, scurrying hive-builders EXPIRE."
"Uhhh..."
All four of them stare, frozen.
In that moment, I unleash the golden lighting, a warbling, joyous cackle bubbling in my throat. The energy crackles and writhes as it erupts from my palms in spiralling arcs. There's a rhythym to it: a two-count while I summon the power. Another two-count, punctuated by the singing shriek of bolts of cosmic energy! A single beat, followed by another lash of my glorious golden fury! A three-count, and so it goes. The darting, leaping symphony of my power washes over them, and they try to evade, rolling and stumbling! Two try to run. Two of them kneel and fire back, little red blasts of light that splash harmlessly off my shining chest.
When my energy strikes them, the effect is more dramatic.
Armor cracks, blackening and bursting on contact, sending scorched shards flying. Bodies are blown backwards, skidding and rolling, leaking streaks of crimson from the fissures in their useless shells!
Only one gets away, fleeing into the featureless void.
I stalk over to one of the corpses, and after some fiddling with my new fingers, which are far more complex to operate than it looks like they should be, I rip its helmet off.
The face underneath resembles the reflection of my own that I glimpsed (such a precise word, that) earlier. A flat face with two eyes, rolling sightlessly, one small mouth occupying the lower portion, and a pronounced nose. It lacks my horns, and the ears are absurdly small and round, but even so, if it had my handsome, shining scales, we could almost be brothers.
Of course, if it had my scales it wouldn't be dead.
I walk over to another, and rip its helmet off as well, the clasps and buckles popping beneath my grip. This one has softer features, and different colored hair.
"What did you think you were going to do today?" I ask the corpse, baring my teeth in joyous savagery. "I'll bet this wasn't it, was it?"
It doesn't answer. It doesn't need to. I'm getting all sorts of ideas.
Before, when I brought worlds to ruin, one of my favorite parts of the experience was always the revelation, the moment when they understood. I was the end of the world, so many worlds, and in being that, I showed them just how little everything they valued truly meant. The ability to read moods seems to have deserted me, but there was a time when I could track decline of a civilization by the depths of their despair.
I ruined planets. I never really had the opportunity - or even the concept, except in rare cases where a world turned out to have a guardian that could match my stature - to ruin individuals. They were simply too small for me to take notice of them except as a group.It was how they reacted en-mass to the destruction of their works, their cities, and the biospheres that raised them up where the meat of the experience lay (not that ravaging those things wasn't tremendously fulfilling in its own right).
Now that I'm on their level, however, there are so many little differences, even among these three, who were clearly trying hard to look as similar as possible. Each one has a brain, like me: a perspective. It follows then that each one of these creatures contains a world for me to ruin. The differences are what makes each act of destruction special. Uniqueness, the loss of a thing that will never come again, is where the beauty of it lies.
I still want my body back - but now I think I'll have to find a way to switch between my original form and this one.
Ruining a planet one person at a time...
I'm going to have to make my next victim tell me about itself before I kill it.