"That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange aeons even death may die."
-H.P. Lovecraft "The Nameless City"
Time for such a young species like humans often grew quicker with age, each year passing faster and with less meaning than the last. For a being such as his Kind, however, it seemed to grow with not so much haste, as with diligence, working the puzzle pieces into place became more a labor of love then of concern. His kind knew what would happen and when, with few variables. The moments of true surprise and excitement were rare but welcome, other times events built up to their magnificent climax with mounting anticipation; the satisfaction savored, if fleeting.
His Kind were infinite and eternal, and their game was the Great Game: the conquest of time and space. His Kind was here before the universe formed, watching stars wink into existence, vast chasms of unfathomable, roiling reaches that the kind of human and his alike could never hope to plunder. Things unseen and seen alike, within reach of each other, existing and not existing within the same pocket of reality.
Reality was nowhere near as concrete and tangible as the humans thought, most of it untouchable and ethereal as the breeze through their hair. Both deep and black, shallow and clear, in rolling waves crashing upon the shore of eternity, ancient and undying as the stars in their sky.
This revelation would be perhaps comforting to their species. The idea that something lay beyond death, past the boundaries of limitation, consciousness and mortal forms. Dreams were more glimpses into other worlds, pathways with corridors ever endless, doors open to every possibility, moreso then they were ever nonsense.
It was not comforting, however, as it also meant they had to deal with him.
The opening of the gateways between physical worlds let loose his Kind upon this world and all others. His home planet already had especially thin contacts between all worlds, and was in fact where the forms of dead consciousness of this world and others would transfer. It was fascinating how indistinguishable they were once they reverted to forms of energy, albeit pathetic and paltry compared to those of his Kind. Before they even knew what humans were, they were mere whispers on the stale, hot wind. There were more layers of dimensions on their world then there were levels to Dante's Inferno, and sin mattered not to them.
When the first physical human came, that was when it truly began. He was taken, he was turned, and his Kind's true talents became known and unsnarled. Their burrows, their cities, their eternal kingdoms rattled with possibilities. The skies opened and world split into more fragments then they could imagine. Their fate became the first thing tangible and real to them, no longer simply traveling the hallways of dimensions and dreams; or the nearby stars where they conquered mere dead planets with their barren moons. The dimensional fork gave them the ability to go anywhere. And just like that, so easily, they became the scourge of galaxies, a wrath upon the breadth of eternity and a plunderer of both time and space. Whole species wiped from the expanse of physicality and the rest taken as slaves, spoils distributed, planets changed to meet their whims. They could not be assuaged, they would take what was rightfully theirs: the primordial Lords of the void betwixt stars.
He walked in a physical form that could feel the ground at his feet, the air in his hair and the clothes on his body. This world would fall slowly, but it would succumb. Much like death, it was inevitable. And just like the realms beyond death, it would be his domain. He would take it for his Kind, and he would have fun doing it. There was no need to rush. Missing this one moment in time would be criminal.
A thought like that made the corner of his physical, human host's mouth twitch in the slightest smile. Oh yes, it has been fun. Rather annoying at times, he had used more copies of himself then he would have liked- painfully, at that.
The Final Game for this planet had already begun, the Boy's turning heralded the ability to create the contagion that would kill more than half the world, and change the rest. Some would become his sentinel servants, others would join his army of the dead. Either way they would serve him here or be sent back home, where the need for servants on the physical plane was always high. Although as he spent enough time here, he supposed this began to feel more and more like the world he belonged in.
He so much wanted to spend his invasion taking every town along the way, relishing in the taking of their dead and reanimating them body and mind- Perhaps skirting and defeating the Ice-Cream Man and his token band of motley fools if need be. They were fun, the only challenge he had at this point- but the Boy, the one they called "Mike" was ready. He could sense his planted seed ripening in the boy's head. It was a succulent irony that The Boy that had first thwarted him, challenged him, made him bleed- would become his progeny. What a wonderful and unexpected surprise.
The Tall Man held The Boy's cranial sphere in his hand. It was large and golden, still covered with his yellow, thick blood. The blood he had gifted him, along with everything else, to help his transformed body abate the cold. Like everything in him, it had changed cell by cell, atom by atom, at his ministrations. He had to keep his excitement in check, he could enjoy this victory for millennia, best not to celebrate too soon.
For now, Michael's form was still, hibernating until he was ready. The Boy's body lay back at the previous dimension, the remnants of his reptile brain no doubt firing off panic signals, perhaps even journeying to dimensions unknown in a vain attempt to keep it's consciousness free. It didn't matter- it was one of many Michaels- and they were all his. He owned The Boy before he was born, as well as his brother. What really mattered was that the rest of his brain, the cerebral cortex, where he truly would ascend- was held in his hands.
His home world was now The Boy's home world, the original world they all hailed from. The one they transferred to when they fled the cold of space. His host body, both his and The Boy's, saw it in red. A crimson desert as far as the eye could see, stretching miles into its own unforeseeable reach. The Lurkers, the dimunitized beings, stretched along it and gave him the fearful reverence he demanded. They never gave him trouble. Too stupid to question, although quite often not quite up to the task back on The Green Planet. They made excellent miners, harvesting their already barren world of little resources they had left.
Yet despite this, it was home. The Tall Man didn't just see red with his transformed eyes, but felt and saw the tapestry of ethereal winds woven into the ground and sky. Colors humans didn't even know existed, couldn't bare to be described, the sensations of raw energy and solar winds in the thin atmosphere like a hurricane of unyielding, burning gales. He couldn't wait for The Boy to see it with his evolved eyes.
It would be the first time one of his Kind had been able to do such a thing, procreate a consciousness. Very rarely had The Tall Man ever been worried in his long life, but he had to admit he felt a little concern at the idea of miscalculating, and losing The Boy. He had to be alive at the extraction, otherwise he would pull a drone ball, like that annoying girl from Perigord. Although in that case she never had the hope of carrying the seed, she never had the potential. She failed every test he gave her.
They had a connection, he knew, The Boy and the girl. It was in his Kind's nature to gravitate towards each other and form intense social bonds. The Tall Man and all his Kind were practically a collective conscious. They had very little desire to compete, and their Kind had no wars, at least not with one another. They were not used to losing one another as they could not die. Once they began to travel space, they found it hard to stay apart from one another. It was one of the many reasons why they were particularly slow in this endeavor.
The Boy's pain was muddled and mixed, no doubt, from the turmoil he had put him through- but that connection between him and the girl being severed was unlike anything the mortician had felt before. It was something his species simply had no terms to put into. In this, he had no remorse- had the girl lived as well, she would prove competition for his and The Boy's much-needed bonding, they both would be harder to keep an eye on and control, perhaps they could even be able to breed and prove a problem in both population management and a question to his authority- but it did give him pause.
Be more careful with the boy, he told himself- a lighter touch. When he hung from his neck in Death Valley, when he recounted one of the many realities where he had done the same with himself, shred the rope and offer your hand. Of course he will refuse, he is strong, he carries part of you inside him, carries your blood in his changed veins and whose heart beats altogether a different tone, his tone, but you must not rend him apart. No, no matter how much you may want to.
He needed to extract the sphere as effortlessly as possible, to keep The Boy's mind intact. It had been something rather tiresome, he had to admit. Being speared by a frozen harpoon had actually annoyed him more than he would like to admit. The cranial sphere almost never ejected itself forcefully, preferring to stay in a warm, grounded host, protected, unless absolutely necessary. When said form froze and shattered however, his baser instincts to save himself kicked in and escaped. That, and well, he was pissed. At that moment he was willing to kill anyone he came into contact with, game be damned.
But that was neither here nor there, he had won that particular game. The Boy was cradled in his two hands, precious cargo he was. The cranial sphere, gold- indicating his rank and importance, his heritage. He shed his larval, Earthly form and became his most basal, basic consciousness. He was not the brain nor the metal, but a collection of swarming energy, a hive of thinking masses, chittering voices and all-seeing eyes. No human eye could see it in this state, nor would most likely want to. Rarely was this own form ever shed naked, though he experienced it back when the hearse exploded in his face. The winds of his form scattered and screamed, terrified at the sudden ejection. Yet his close proximity to a fork had made it bearable.
Jumping from host to host was not a fun thing, it was a necessary thing. Each death hurt, each moment he was dropped into a mineshaft, eaten away from within, frozen and blown up had been remembered forever. Coupled that with changing forms- which no matter what, he felt each time- quite akin to being flayed alive, then laid naked to the endless, undying cold of the most bitter reaches of space- and placed back inside.
His anger faded- yet oddly, his impression remained. Clever Boy, indeed. Fighting to the last moment. It was funny how every time he snarled back, tooth and nail, he was really just cementing his realization that this experiment of his was successful. There was the accelerated decision to dispatch his potential enemies- like his own brother, or the past Jebediah- he was skillful and cunning. Or his biting, fierce rebellion to his reclamation efforts; the more he looked in The Boy's eyes, the more he saw himself.
He came upon the capital city, non-euclidean, towering and terrible. Many of their cities were underground, others reached into the horrible sky, painted a mix of green from the lights, red from the haze and black from the void of space. He didn't care for it, many didn't- too cramped, even for his sparse species and his own high social standing- it was one of the reasons why he spent all his time away. Earth had become more a home then this place had. Yet, the way the spires reached into the heavens, pierced the atmosphere, making nest among the stars; it made even his ancient, cruel heart proud. A fitting narrative for their dominion over land and space made clear.
This city was built by his kind, and the next would be built by slaves. As it should be, as was meant to be.
With a stride as long as his, as tall a form as his, he stood out among the inhabitants. The city was sparse as all their cities were, an empire spread thin among the stars. Other beings, some as ageless as them have tried to war with them, conquer them, find ways to kill them, all crashed and broken like waves on the shore. Instead, they had taken their kind as slaves, as hosts, and sometimes even as pets. Some were long, sinewy worms with hideous mouths- some miasmatic clouds, black and endless, with a thousand unblinking eyes. There were beings of pure light, bigger or smaller than their sphere forms, hidden inside as they pulled the strings. Creatures that were taller than him, reaching into the sky, long sinewy legs, hob-kneed and cloven hooved- struggling to walk with it's hundred limbs and balloon body in such dense gravity. Some had tentacles, slimy and glistening. Others, dry and blind, flying with rippling ribbons and wild tendrils. Their bodies appearing too impractical to even float, especially in their atmosphere.
All of them, however, felt him, and shuddered. Nothing perished and passed into alter-worlds quite like humans did. Nothing had the reputation that his tall, imposing form did. Humans were famous in this world, yet he was the only one with a host from The Green Planet. It was his realm alone, his domain, as was its dead.
His kind could not die, at least not in the sense that humans knew it. They could go mad, enter a depression that sank them into oblivion, they could be entered into servitude for millennia at a time. They could even sleep if they so choose, but sleep for one of his Kind was no small feat. Their dreams sank them into unknown worlds that may make return difficult. Countless numbers of his kind were lost to the cosmic winds, unable to be found. All because they grew tired, unable to make suitable feed on the aether between dimensions nor the blood of physical beings. Or perhaps simply because they grew bored and weary, dooming themselves to the loneliest of lives possible.
But humans? Oh how they fought, how they hated death. Something that took away their physical being and ate away at it, rife with foetor and the sweet smell of rot. They had no knowledge of the nature of death, the greatest unknown there was. Their burial rituals were fascinating, something of arcane interest to the whole of all other worlds. Especially him. When he turned the human he overtook now; he learned the art of embalming first-hand. It was a marvelous thing. Of pure reverence.
His kind didn't die; didn't decompose; didn't return to the dirt from whence they came. They didn't have mothers or fathers, brothers or sisters. They didn't "mourn" for those that passed, because they never could. Flesh made to last a little longer- flesh- something that still felt odd to him- preserved through some chemicals and thread. Sew a mouth and eyes shut, convince a mind that perhaps they still lived, the husk an art piece itself, later he took the body and mind, shackled them, and he gave them an opportunity to serve a greater purpose. They would soon learn just how kind he was, what he had given them.
It was a thing of beauty. Of complete domination of their minds. The living kept believing their dead were laid to rest. He gained two followers for every dead. Their bodies, kept with their reptile brains intact as they fed on his enemies and worked at the mines at home. Their minds became his flock, sheep to his shepherd, silver sentinel spheres that could host a variety of implements. Silver spheres made up the infantry of his army. They were permitted back home on The Red Planet only as slaves. Every now and then one had some blip of self-consciousness, but it was quickly squashed. They would forever be considered the lowest form of society, though calling them anything but "things" was a stretch in its own capacity.
They were Ascended Beings turned soldiers, not beings that lived since the dawn of time. They didn't carry the same memory, the same boredom from eternal life, the same pain that came with being born from the emptiness between stars and the heat that birthed the universe. They didn't slumber for thousands of years while the others learned knowledge from the vast reaches of space. They didn't harvest from polluted rivers and bottomless seas, and take the forms of undulating beasts that dominated the skies. The acrid smoke didn't sting their host's lungs as they realized, too late, that what could not kill them as non corporeal beings could still pain them, and began conquering pristine worlds as they sought recompense.
For beings that had no ability to die, his Kind took such high reverence, such interest. Perhaps envy. The hivemind found his presence ominous, unique, exotic and fascinating. Upon the masses swept an unholy curiosity for the eidolon. His kind's biggest fears were madness and insanity, of resting and being absorbed by the cosmos and appearing far from home. Yet in the back of their minds tickled the very possibility, the faintest of phantasms, that they may be able to die, that something out there may be able to do it. They just haven't found it yet, and in their greed for conquest they will unearth it's horrible visage.
Yet others wanted to die, those trapped in the spiral of insanity, those who wish for nothing more but for the ability to be put down, to be put out like a raging fire at the pyre that consumed all hopes along with it. For them his presence was to be revered, cherished, in those halls he was not feared and in the dark, abysmal voids into which the most mad of his kind have fled, they called for him.
Everywhere he went he was surrounded by the embalmed and decayed corpses of the empty, of the deceased, the dead. Their smell became a sweet nectar, the chemicals a perfume. He found himself entrenched, yet enthralled. When he lit the candles of the candelabras and sat in his throne in the dark, he felt them whisper in their spheres, words undecipherable, but they didn't need to be. He felt the energy rise from the aether surrounding him and it was then that he knew it was time.
He took his title. The Lord of the Dead, and with it, his Kind knelt.
The laboratory he had furnished on his home planet had the very best of everything. Instruments developed by him long before he had acquired this human form, but many after it as well. Yet even some just after finding out his experiment had taken root. He couldn't be sure how much of it was surprise on his part. He had no true confidence it would work, and was just as shocked to find The Boy to be the carrier, and not his older brother. All in the very town where his human shell had developed his business and livelihood, the place that bore his name.
He knew it for certain, that the time was now and not generations, millennia from then, but now. In a time frame his Kind would consider not even a blink. Luckily there wasn't much more to be done. He had built a "cradle", a metal concave platform lined in a thick, soft, sheepskin material to hold the exact dimensions of a sphere like his own. Around it lay a bay to contain it in case, in his fervor to escape, he fell. He wasn't taking any chances. The Boy couldn't walk out of a fork like himself had he been destroyed. Repeating this process could take decades, if he wasn't lucky enough to snag him in another time and world. It would be far from easy and truth be told, he was ready, and done being disappointed.
He told himself he was being too kind, that The Boy deserved to be uncomfortable and miserable, to break and be scooped up from the polished floor. To perhaps be disciplined so soon and put right back in the desert, in the Funeral Mountains where he could fail again and again, until he learned his lesson. To serve him like he was meant to. Yet he also told himself he was the first of his Kind. A creature born of pure energy, somehow harnessed, somehow compressed, copied, passed through molecules like a screaming, dying star and made flesh. He had harnessed the human's own inferior brain and consciousness, and fused it with his own to walk among their godly forms. Like some lower, fetid beast of burden being brought to heal- something vile learning to walk that had ought to crawl.
Sometimes, he did delight in the silver sentinels, especially the ones that knew their place. The ones that got results. The Tall Man would be the first in admitting they didn't always hit their desired targets. So many were harvested from old corpses, rotted brains that had lost far too much knowledge, they looked promising but delighted in killing anything, including his own troops. Many of his followers were influenced by his trance-like ability, however, not revived from the dead- he supposed he couldn't blame the spheres too much. They gave off too much heat, prime fodder when their blood was up.
His Kind wasn't devoid of compassion, and neither was he. Never would he admit the totality of it, the weakness he knew it presented; yet this planet was a lonely one. Despite the strong bonds his Kind formed with others, he saw no desire or kinship with them. The Red Planet was alien even to him. He slept for millions of years at a time, out of boredom, depression, sometimes out of a desire to share a conversation with another, form a physical bond, touch, share his culture and perhaps even their culture to him- it made him feel an unending, nauseous unease.
From a species who prided itself, lied to itself, his hivemind had delayed but not died. All of his kind felt drawn to another, had tried in their vain hopes to reproduce. To do more than just copy, assault the multiple dimensions with more and more of blank slates ready to be activated. The humans were a perfect host, numerous, easy to breed, easy to fool. Their minds especially held very high promise, some of their population being very receptive. There were many names like psychic, empath, practitioners of dark arts; others said to be mad, sometimes all of the above. Their third eye was open and unblinking, like a doorway to his Kind and the worlds beyond it.
The Boy had been a dreamer, able to travel to other worlds all while asleep and unbidden. He reached out with tendrils spreading through the layers of time and space, calling to him and he was to The Boy, all without them knowing it. The Tall Man had closed his fist around the tendril and squeezed it apart from the screaming thing, an annoyance, a plaything, and it had writhed. Like so many humans before it was but a thing to be driven down and dominated.
But no, he didn't linger long on those thoughts. Not for long. The Boy was his now, painfully killed by extracting his brain from his body, his brother also his in perpetual, fearful servitude, the ice cream man, a favorite play-thing of his, searching in some godforsaken world somewhere. The pride of his breeding program was here, would be presented to court for all to see and marvel. Beside him would stand his failure of a brother, a perfect example of contrast, like the whipped Dog that he was.
Being scorched black was the worst possible mark to his Kind. The chrome sheen signified the unending worlds the reflection provided. A matt black was a massive shuttering of possibilities, reducing their Kind to the beginning, when they lived in agony writhing in the cold vacuum of space and drifting further to the first dying stars. They had no prisons, only servitude. His scorching would signify to everyone how he had defied him and was punished severely.
However, this "Jody" was rather unique. He had more abilities then the black sphere would ever utilize, and The Tall Man nearly gave into interest and considered travelling into a time where he hadn't dabbled in heavy drug use during his time on the road, wondering if this was the key factor in frying what was left of his potential. In the end, he decided he wasn't worth it.
Speak of the devil. The black sphere's gentle levitation droned as it entered the room. He had called him, in what felt like ages ago. For a being like him, that was no small feat.
"Do you ever cease in disappointing me?"
Silence, yet he could feel the shame and resolute terror from the mongrel. He was not built to be a soldier, that much was certain. A coward, only useful from his genetic relation to his progeny and unique brain. The fact that he could rebel was evidence enough. It was the only reason why he was still alive.
"I'm sorry, my Lord." It was just low enough, he could barely hear it. He was frightened, at least. His consciousness shivered in his presence.
"I find that hard to believe. You didn't see that fool hand him the tuning fork? Or maybe you did- chose not to divulge that with me?"
"No, my Lord. I didn't see that. I didn't-"
He's crying. The Tall Man almost never audibly sighed, but he did this time. The Dog had been broken in and mind flayed. The nerve endings left in his brain were ravaged from his corrections, and he feared them with every atom of his being. He almost felt bad, there was no sport in this.
"Shut up!" The brother levitated back, the chittering from the sphere audible as it tried to placate him. "The least you could have done was put up a fight! You're lucky I copied you, if I didn't need you, you'd have never seen your damned brother again."
Jody's ball flew low, like his head laid low to a chopping block.
"Is he… Is he okay? Can I see-"
The Tall Man's eyes darted up and held onto him. He could sense him trying to take his human form, but he willed against it. No. He didn't get that privilege now. There were sentinels more loyal than him, reaching some level of near-sentience who hated his status and wanted him to be placed in servitude. They sowed anger among the ranks, and he allowed it, because he wanted him punished. He didn't deserve his rank, his scorched-black exterior and damaged psyche was the agony he deserved.
"You will leave. When you are needed you will be called."
"But is he okay-"
Had he been in a worse mood Jody would have been most likely ripped asunder. Instead he was thrown across the room, hitting it and bouncing with just enough force and direction that it flew down and rolled down the side. Sparks flew from the contact, and the black sphere lay silent. He wasn't dead- although he wished it more and more. The audacity to talk back, the freedom he was able to take made him rage. When the time came he may very well place him in his own hell so he may be punished at his leisure. Yet for now? A token of goodwill, a gift, and a manipulation tool for The Boy.
Until then he let the ball lay, discarded until he decided to retrieve him. He took the golden sphere to the sink, where he cleaned it with a rag, carefully until his blood had been washed away, polishing it with a dry one until it shone. He held it with reverence, petting it as he felt the life hum underneath. Yes, the flesh construct had died completely just about now. His consciousness had been magnetized to this one just as predicted. He held him asleep and at bay, he would need to rest first.
'Pulling him out now could be damaging… I need him healthy.'
Just as he had let the boy's body rest for years after the hearse wreck, he knew sometimes it was best to wait. Around the cradle was a clear incubator. He opened the door and placed the sphere inside, feeling a slight sense of comfort from the golden sphere when he did so.
Closing the door, he locked it, making adjustments on the nearby monitor for a temperature hotter than Earth could ever get. This was one of the reasons he had led the boy to Death Valley, take him somewhere hot and barren, rocky- somewhere where the cranial sphere that housed his true form would be comfortable. Indeed he had, slowly awakening, emerging like a bird from an egg. His abilities formed quicker, he was summoning new dimensional forks without even trying, utilizing his bond and connection to the hivemind as he made his own sentinel sphere and a damned car bomb.
It was almost cute- perhaps he would appreciate it more when he wasn't still reeling from the mental anguish of being blown to bits. But he had infinity to let him know how much he appreciated being destroyed over and over again. Maybe in many of their future games, he could see to it personally.
Walking out of the room, The Tall Man decided to partake in the slightest of urges and pick up Jody's sphere. He could have sworn he heard it crying again, but paid it no mind.