It was a thing of beauty. A work of art. The most amazing thing I had ever set my eyes upon. Those who had brought it here for me had already extolled its magnificence, for none who looked upon it remained unchanged. This... this god had been cruelly taken from the world. It was unfair. The injustice must be rectified.

Flesh twisted into a hundred tentacles, arranged in seemingly impossible configurations, with some even appearing to pass straight through each other. A thousand eyes, frozen in time, still seemed to stare right through me. A thousand maws, opened wide. Claws and fangs, scales and hair, positioned seemingly at random. A wing jutting out from a lump of flesh here, and a leg there. Mockeries of faces, screwed up into expressions of eternal screams, protruded slightly from the raw flesh. It was pure chaos, and it was divine.

One look at the being was enough to change my whole mission. No longer did I want to exploit their alien biology for cures and medicines, or to advance humanity. Humanity was just so... small. It didn't matter. I needed to bring this being back. Even at the cost of my body, my sanity, my self. It deserved to rise again.

I'd dealt with monster corpses before, of course. Our government was eager to unlock their potential, as were those of every other country, given the destruction they had wrought upon their first visit. As a result, everyone with the necessary expertise were encouraged to provide their own input on the subject. All varieties we had access to had been DNA sequenced already, but even after all this time we were no closer to discovering how they actually worked. The eye-witness accounts from the invasion had described fantastical, impossible abilities, so how could they be born from mundane biological components like DNA?

The thought of giving up my own body gave rise to the beginnings of an idea. If we couldn't reverse engineer these creatures from first principles, perhaps we could approach it from the other direction? We took tissue samples from the frozen corpses, and implanted them in other creatures. The cells may biologically be dead, but if their supernatural abilities were not grounded in biology, why should that matter?

The effects were quickly apparent. The supposedly dead tissue was virulent, infecting the animals it was implanted into. Trying to transform them. It failed, and all animals perished, but it was nevertheless significant progress. Why had no-one ever tried this before?

Further experimentation revealed two things. First that best results were achieved in a narrow age range, and second that higher, more complex, longer lived life progressed further before meeting their demise. Then the obvious solution was to experiment on the highest, most complex form of life we had available to us. After all, one look at the divine corpse was all that it took for anyone to realise the necessity of offering themselves up for the cause. My only regret was that I couldn't offer myself, needing to continue to lead our effort.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The result was a qualified success; an age range was identified in which subjects died not of the metamorphosis, no, the ascension, itself, but of starvation before their ascension could complete. It was the same fate as the originals, but no amount of food would help. Even intravenously fed nutrients made no difference. It wasn't mundane nutrients that the subjects were starved off. It was... something else. Something that was not available here, in our lowly world.

That of course posed a problem. How could we offer up our world when it lacked a basic requirement of their existence? In desperation, we tried taking tissue samples from half-ascended individuals. Diluting the original divinity with human taint. It was a high price, but if it led to success, we might at least be able to find out what it was we lacked.

It took several repetitions, but eventually the first subject survived, in body if not in mind. It was a bittersweet victory; our creation was above humanity, yet was so far below the glorious heights we were aiming for. While some of the originals had been mindless beasts, others had been highly intelligent, even communicative, yet all of our creations fell to madness, consumed by an unending rage. We had taken nothing more than the first step towards our goal. Next we needed to solve the starvation and insanity problems.

We observed that our creation favoured the consumption of raw flesh, and given the option preferred that of more complex life forms, up to and including human. That was a clue; the preferences correlated with the survival times of our initial experiments. It would appear that whatever these beings required could be found on our world after all, either produced by or concentrated by life. All we needed to do was find some way to concentrate it further.

It was at that point, when we were so close, that we were shut down. The same authorities that had tasked me with the research started complaining about my methods, and all the deaths. Why? Everyone involved was a volunteer. They'd all signed disclaimers, and all our paperwork was in order. What did they have to complain about? They claimed that viewing the divine corpse caused madness, and confiscated it, but that was wrong. It merely showed the truth. I'd demonstrably done no wrong, so they couldn't touch me personally, but without some way to share the glory of these beings I could no longer secure test subjects.

I was reduced to entrusting my research to another, outside of Gronorlie and hence out of reach of our authorities. It was incredibly frustrating, particularly since he hadn't seen the truth. But I knew we'd win in the end. He thought he could control them. Control our gods! The very idea was laughable! I would let him build his army for now. I would even cooperate. I knew full well that once he succeeded, created not our current mockeries, but a living, breathing divine being, his creation would never tolerate any form of control. They would rightfully seize our world for themselves, and I would welcome them with open arms.