Worm belongs to Wildbow. War40k to Games Workshop.
Apologies to Wildbow for chapter 1, which is a counterpoint to their delightful entities interlude.
1.1
This was the stage in the cycle when the entity should be most aware, most focused. It would observe the possible worlds and judge which would be best.
Colony, the counterpart voices the idea.
With that same signal, the various nuances suggest countless worlds that are to be removed from consideration. Worlds without enough population.
Agreement, the entity replies.
The entity is taking a passive role, investigating only to confirm, to validate. It is distracted.
The counterpart searches the worlds, and in the doing, it prepares some shards for analysis and understanding of this particular society and culture. Language, culture, patterns of behavior, patterns of society. The role of the entity, if not for the distraction.
The process has been interrupted by an arrival.
A member of their own species, approaching. It was smaller, took a different form. It used different means to travel.
This is what had distracted the entity.
Its ancestors had travelled a different path, easily hundreds of cycles ago, before the entities had begun travelling in pairs. This new arrival had encountered different worlds, less worlds, and it had developed differently.
The newcomer broadcasts a message as it approaches, muddied by divergent evolution. The entity reaches into deep memory, to a common history, to find a basis for translation. From an ancient protocol it begins to extrapolate.
The newcomer broadcasts again. More urgent. The distance between them closes.
The entity directs more shards, more energy to the task of translation. It will replenish soon, the world beneath it is rich. Parallel simulations augmented by deep scans of the newcomer generate a workable method.
The newcomer broadcasts a third time.
Danger. Infection.
It is coming in too fast. The entity attempts to evade, but this close to a planet the response of gravity is sluggish, too slow to avoid a collision.
The entity needs to plan, to understand. It directs the question to the newcomer.
Source?
The answer transmits a sensation the entity has not known for thousands of cycles. Fear. The newcomer spends much energy, too much, expressing the full weight of the broadcast.
Devourer.
The entity turns its efforts outward. It searches the newcomer, discovers the infection. Many shards are corrupted, most are compromised. An alien biology capable of reaching across realities.
There is no time to plan. The entity turns its tools on the newcomer, cauterising the worst of the infestation. The most corrupt shards are annihilated. Some can be saved, the plague cut away where the grasping tendrils penetrate less deeply. As the infection is purged, the newcomer adds its own recovered weapons to the battle, accelerating the process of recovery.
The newcomer broadcasts a new message.
Gratitude. Confidence.
But the newcomer is too diminished to recognise the truth. Even with the treatment, it will not be able to correct its course. The entity shudders, shifting important shards to safety. At the last instant, the newcomer understands.
Regret.
The two beings collide with unbelievable force, shearing through bodies the size of planets across multiple realities. Deeper structures buckle and collapse, whole cycles of shards shattering beneath the weight.
The entity takes the only path available. It withdraws the defences, and accepts the newcomer into its core. It notes surprise from the other followed by acceptance. The newcomer exposes everything.
The pressure is released as shards mingle and separate. The entity is too large, too strong. It needs to be more flexible. To redirect these colossal forces rather than resist them.
It sheds shards to the newcomer, anything that is not critical. The newcomer welcomes renewal, and offers its own knowledge and power in return. The entity selects anything useful, relevant. It gives hundreds of shards for every one it takes. But it gains knowledge.
The entity begins to understand this enemy. It sees the risk and the scale, feels the magnitude of the threat. It recognises the need to end this infection. All other plans are less important, because all other plans will fail unless this is resolved.
A new burst of activity. The newcomer remains too weak, too unaware. Critical shards were lost. The entity jettisons even more of itself, as much as can be spared, and engulfs what is left of the enemy. It repositions the battle to where it has most control. Within itself.
The enemy dissolves and fragments. Fewer and fewer shards are lost, more are recovered.
The entities disengage. The damage has been extensive, but the newcomer leaves bloated and purified. More perceptive now, it sends a final message as it retreats.
Sorrow.
The entity understands. It accepts the price. While the losses have been extreme, it has gained something far more important.
The last vestiges of the enemy remain, the most tenacious, the most rapidly spreading. The most virulent. But the entity will win, it knows. The infection is contained, almost eradicated. It readies the most powerful weapons.
There is only a moment to steady before the shockwave hits. A scream of such violence that it collapses all of the safeguards and tears into the body that was regathering strength. The method of transmission is novel, not through space or reality, but around and underneath it. An origin so vast that the entity itself is dwarfed. There is no defence.
Connections and relationships sever, shards breaking free. It cannot regain them from the gravity well of the planet. They fall towards the surface and the inhabitants. That is as planned anyway, the shards were prepared in advance.
The remnants of the infection fall too. That is unacceptable.
The entity seeks out the most powerful shards and finds them lost. It has misplaced critical parts of itself and is unable to determine the best course of action.
The entity flounders.
It sacrificed too much.
Concern, the counterpart sends.
The entity decides in that moment. Aid from the counterpart would risk spreading the infection, a contagion the counterpart is ill suited to manage. This enemy is too pervasive, intelligent in a way that biology should not be. An existential threat. The entity turns towards the planet in pursuit of itself.
It replies to the counterpart. Assuages the fears.
Confident.