2184. The Dreamlands.
She existed serenely in a state that would have driven a human insane. She was aware that her physical body had been captured by the soft little insects and had a vague sense of her body and the minds that surrounded her. They were small, light, fleeting. Compared with her Glory and Darkness, they were dust motes. Sometimes they came into her dream, a vast-spanning colony inspired by a distant world found in her genetic memory. Breaking them was a momentary amusement.
Recently, there had been another, unlike them and unlike her. It was heavy, dark, dense. It gave nothing away. She got the idea that the mind was observing her somehow, even though they were worlds apart. Fear was a sensation she had not experienced personally, but the new mind caused her… unease.
However, here, in her personal Dream, she was invincible. The soft insects protected her physical body, while her mind enjoyed freedom and Power. It was a circumstance which pleased her.
The dream changed around her. Later, she could not identify exactly how, but the quality of the dream changed, and her hostile spirit flared, expecting that the insects had sent in another chittering livestock to disrupt her.
Her senses scanned her surroundings. Normally, they came fast and broke just as fast. Where was it?
She moved through her astral lair, a silent Titan on the hunt. She found nothing, sensed nothing she could pinpoint. Even so, there was another in her dream. She knew it as surely as she heard the distant, soft Voice of the Great Mother.
Her dream was not merely the colony and her own nest, but a whole world. So, undaunted, she left the empty colony, seeking the bold but foolish thing poking about in her inner mind.
She had only passed the nearest hill before she found him. Nearly stepped on him.
She regarded him for a moment. Somewhat bigger than the others, but same body type. She didn't detect his surface thoughts, which was unusual but a technique that could be learned. His gaze found her. The others had all emanated terror, regret, dread. This one gave nothing away, in feeling or in presentation.
He raised his left hand towards her in a gesture that seemed friendly.
O Great and Beauteous Queen, I humbly beg your ear, the figure said in thoughtspeech, the universal language that she and her kin held communion in.
The arrogance of this little thing invading her domain and addressing her was too much for her, and in her hostility, her Power sharpened and directed against the invader.
My ear and more you will have, tasty morsel, she promised. Many of your like have come unto me, and you shall soon know well their fate. She applied the pressure she had generated, a psychic force that none had yet withstood. Her glee at the easy victory added to her malice and murderous intent. She kept it up for longer than she needed to, longer than the others had taken to break and submit their lifeforce.
Puzzlement followed where there had only been satisfaction before. There was not the mental scream or feelings of anguish she sought from her prey. He was watching her in the same position she had found him in. Was this the mind she had been feeling? It seemed impossible that any of the soft insects could have possessed such an alien will. She had assumed it was a different kind of being.
My turn, he said, and she reeled from the force of the Voice, which spoke in many legions and struck her mind like a fist. What she had thought of as one of the soft insects blurred, becoming a Shape in the Darkness, a Shape whose Will threatened to overtake her Sovereignty, a Will that challenged her authority over all things in her dreamscape. The Shape grew, matching a Servant, a Princess, she herself, a Titan, the Great Mother, and beyond, still beyond it grew until it seemed the planet they stood on could not bear the size of him.
Powered by instinctive Hate, she rallied, sending spears and shockwaves of murderous intent into the Shape as it grew and roiled, sprouting from itself many heads, vast wings, limbs with seven digits, multiple tails, and as the pair pitted their Wills against each other, the Other assumed new Shape- a, impossibly vast Dragon, wreathed in darkness and smelling of the Old Blood, the Blood of the Miracle that had come long before her people were as they are now. Its heads were seven, its tails three. Two wings, as wide as the cosmos, and four other limbs. In genetic memory, she had never seen anything like this before. Her confidence wavered for an instant before it was replaced with aggression.
No matter what shape you take, you are only human, she challenged, unwilling to cede even an inch no matter her opponent. You are my rightful Prey, little one!
He is not alone in this body, the Dragon replied, his Voice now so powerful that it seemed to reverberate the heavens and the earth. How dare you call out to him?
No! I won't let you! The Queen's hatred burned white hot. She was the apex predator, the thing all others feared and respected who feared and respected no other. Whatever trickery was afoot, that was absolute! This is my world! MY WORLD!
The Dragon stared, and it seemed that his fourteen eyes were only One, One terrible Eye that peered at her, through her, beyond her. The world under their feet was gone in an instant, and there was only the cold darkness of the Cosmos. What world? The Eldritch God challenged. A little thing like you does not command worlds.
Until now, she had assumed that the Dragon was fighting her, resisting her power actively with his own. Now, his Eyes, many and terrible, brightened, and his heads fanned out. He oriented himself towards her such that he seemed to be a Black Ship or even a celestial body himself, seven heads the size of moons, dozens of miles of necks, body, and tails, each tail ending in fearsome rattling maces, and wings that blotted out starlight.
The maws of the vast heads opened, and the true attack came.
Fire seared her, cooking her fluids in her exoskeleton. Chill took her, so absolute it seemed to be its own form of death. Lightning surged through her, popping out weaker chunks of her exoskeleton and spraying acid into space harmlessly, her ultimate defense now barely an academic consideration. Darkness overtook her senses, blinding her to anything but pain and uncertainty. She felt something sharp, wet, and warm on the top of her head, something that began eating into her from the inside out. Not acid. Venom.
The agony lasted an eternity in the Dreamlands. For eons uncounted, she writhed and screamed as the Dragon exercised his fury, repaying her attack with such overwhelming firepower and ferocity that new feelings were stirring inside her, foreign feelings that none of her people were expected to experience within themselves.
Eternity passed, and the agony receded. At last, she could see and think again. The pain had so dazzled her that even in the darkness of space, she seemed to be seeing glowing lights. She shook her head, but the lights' position did not change.
I don't believe it… It was him. The vast Dragon was emitting that glow. It was coming from the long spines along his tails, back, and necks. It came from one set of his eyes.
Before she fully understood how dire things were, the next attack came. Bluish-white erupted from one of the Dragon's mouths, the ends of his tails, and sections of his dorsal spines. The light was hot like starfire, and seared her astral body to its Core, wounds that seemed they might never heal.
She hung in space, burned, frozen, electrocuted, blinded, envenomed, and blasted into barely-living wreckage. The Dragon moved only one neck, and her vision was filled with the sight of a single red Eye, an Eye far larger than her entire body.
She had felt the emotions she was experiencing in others, but never directly. Now, she understood them better. The hopelessness. The humiliation of having a far superior being tear one apart. Feeling completely crushed under the might of another. Not knowing if she was going to live, or if she would ever be well again.
Fear…
The three young girls stared up, awestruck, at the tall and pale man who had been telling them this story of far away and long ago.
That can't be the end! Violet protested.
Did you help her awaken and escape? Xenobia added.
Or did you side with the little people and help keep them safe from her? Alcina added.
Dracul smiled and hugged the three small ladies, still faintly smelling of their host mothers.
I told you I'd tell you about the other big people I met, he replied, and that moment is the most significant of that time of my life. What came after only led us here.
Violet nuzzled into him, squealing in a soft tone. Will you tell us another? she pled, using the Xenomorph equivalent of puppy eyes and hopeful smiles.
I'd be happy to, Dracul replied, letting the girls settle on him to soak up the affection and time together while they grew and awaited their first molts. What should it be about?
I would like to hear one about you, Xenobia asked. You're not like the other little people. Do you have two parents?
No, I wasn't built like them, Dracul replied. I'm like you. I came from One and needed another to provide me with the vessel to materialize into this dream.
I don't think I understand what you mean, Alcina said. You have a mother and a host mother?
Dracul thought a moment before replying. I have equivalents. The One I came from is Father/Brother/Self, and my host gives me a body and sacrifices its sense of self, whereas your host mothers sacrificed their bodies to impart their memory and notion of self to you.
What was he like, your One? Violet asked, laying her long head on his shoulder.
He lives still, Dracul corrected. Maybe I should tell you a story that involves us both.
Bonus: Haunted Knight
Dracul was not entirely alone, for none of the Dragonsblood is ever alone so long as the Daemonic Dragon Sings and Dreams within his Core, but Dracul was the sole Draculim. None were like unto him, betwixt the Living Extinction Machine's glory and the Nobility of the Neverdying, so far beneath the Eldritch Titan that the Seven-Headed Dragon considered him mortal, and so far removed from the Neverdying that he seemed to them to be a ghastly abomination that none called brother and all fled before.
Dracul was of the substance of the concentrated Virtue of the Daemonic Dragon, Firstbuilt of a Primordial God, and Life and Power flowed through him second only to He Who Created him. He reached within his own Core and drew forth a form out of his despicable dark Power, a matched companion, but while the Blood of the Daemonic Dragon flowed through it, the titan had no unique core producing its own sentience and life essence.
Dracul showed the dreamscapes he inhabited to the titan, and the titan would look, and listen, and even reply. For a time, this was enough - Dracul could share the worlds he loved, and the titan was as enthusiastic about the world as Dracul was. Still were none like unto Dracul, but his isolation had ended, a new sensation in a long life that had become monotonous and even bleak.
Eventually Dracul realized that the titan had no true thoughts of its own, that it was only a mirror to Dracul's moods. It did not care about the things Dracul showed it, it only echoed Dracul's excitement. It had no opinions of its own, no ideas to share. The mere sight of it began to bring Dracul pain, to mock his loneliness, but Dracul could not bring himself to send it away or destroy it because even a mockery is better than nothing.
Dracul's pain became terrible enough that it permeated the dreams of the great Daemonic Dragon. The vast mind roused itself to Lucidity and reached out to His creation and asked, "Why does thou treat this animate statue as thy companion?".
"I have been lonely," Dracul explained. "A mortal needs mortal company, someone outside himself to share thoughts and know reality. I cannot do this with You, for I am a piece of Yourself. I desire one I could call my like and commune with who could understand the nature of my existence and share in it with us."
And the Daemonic Dragon understood, because He and Dracul were One that inhabited two bodies, and Dracul's loneliness flowed through Him. Moved by the sorrow and desire of his avatar, the Daemonic Dragon dreamed a Core for the Titan. This Core would be like no other, not the innermost self of the Body of Lifeblood, but a self-perpetuating colony of astral Worms that He would imbibe, part to Dracul, and could ever onward pass into suitable Bodies of Virtue, causing the One and his Avatar to evolve into the One Who Is Many…
It is not the nature of Xenomorphs to cry any more than it is their nature to feel afraid. Even so, if the Chrysalides had the capacity, each would have wept, moved by the depths of emotion and memories that accompany telepathic communication.
My mother knew that story, though she heard it differently, Alcina remarked. It was in handwritten books passed down through her family. She read them over and over when she was small. There are two versions. In the first, the Avatar brought the Titan to life out of a God's vanity, not loneliness. The other version skips over the end of yours and jumps right to the point after the Titan becomes self-aware. I wonder if it was abridged in the first place or if one of her foremothers removed it.
Why would she cut that part out? Xenobia asked.
Because it made her feel like we do now, Violet offered.
There was a moment of silence as each of the four processed the thought in their own way.
Why was the old Queen so unfriendly? Alcina asked, wishing to change the subject.
It was all she knew, and by the time she and I met, she wasn't able to consider any other way to be, Dracul answered. Humans set in place mentally over their lifespans, and she was the same. Violence had worked more often than not for her, so she didn't consider that if only she could have seen the humans and I as her allies, we could have helped her establish a great colony with our spacecraft and she might have controlled a sizeable chunk of the universe.
He kissed each of the girls on her forehead, as a human father might lovingly do to his triplets. It was important that you didn't have the genetic memory of us as enemies. Sometimes, keeping a feud ongoing lets one survive, and sometimes, holding onto the grudges of our forebears prevents easy solutions that could benefit everyone involved.
Will you let us have lots of children to spread our symbiosis? Xenobia asked.
Dracul petted her from forehead to tail. It would be good, and the others want it too. The hard thing on our end is finding qualified hosts. It takes a certain temperament, and we need people that are completely on board and happy with their decisions. It isn't good for pain, hate, and terror to be what you remember your host mother for. Even with your memories to counterbalance that experience, it's bad blood that is best kept away from our family.
The girls thought of their mothers- their love, their kindness, the joy they felt when their daughters were born. With the help of Dracul and their mothers, the girls had been careful to kill their host mothers as quickly as possible, resulting in a sensation not much worse than a sudden painful chest spasm before the end. It had been less painful and prolonged than human birth, and with their memories carried forth in their daughters, there was a case to be made that the young women had not died, only become the next generation.
The four cuddled together tighter and entered a state of communal resting, the girls waiting for the distinct itchy tingling that signified it was time to molt, and the thing shaped like a man thinking of his past, his present, and casting his mind into the future.
The far future.