In the infinite darkness in the shadows above the skies, a hideous Being spoke. No visible orifice served as the conduit for its speech but yet... A thrumming noise capable of bringing any who heard it down to their knees clutching their heads in pain rang out. Opening one of its many hands, the figure dropped a squirming red mass of flesh down into one of the many worlds below. Closing its murky black eyes, the figure turned away if it could be called so. The mass of its being shifted, its flesh moved within and through its body as if freed from the confines of the 3rd dimension. The figure’s attention was already elsewhere, far away.
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The squirming mass of flesh descended upon Earth. The mass of flesh passed through the mesosphere without fanfare but the mass of flesh began to spread out into a fine layer. Like pollen, it silently covered a quiet forest as the moon hung silently in the background.
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Upon landing upon landing on leaves, the flesh burrowed into the leaves, dyeing the veins a red color. It was hungry, and It would feed. By the time dawn arrived, the once green forest was covered in the red leaves of autumn.
The roots of the trees replaced by pulsing veins, far underground. And at the center of the forest, deep down below, further than the deepest point of the pond, a large proportion of Its body resided. It steadily gained more mass and energy from the leaves it had long replaced. Soon, it would create flowers, and blossom, and spread itself even further.
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“You know, when you said that we’d be hiking through a nice green forest I thought you were telling the truth.” Said a man. He was dressed conventionally for hiking.
“Well, I’m not from around here either you know? I was told this place had some nice scenery this time of year, I guess they meant by how it had an early autumn?” Said the other man, also dressed for hiking.
The two men paused, soaking in the sounds of the forest. The creaking of branches, the crack of small animals in the underbrush. The creaking of branches? The two men looked up in surprise as two branches rushed down and pierced both men through the eyes.
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A limb from It twisted itself out of this dimension and back in at the outskirts of the forest as It took hold of Its new drones. Two drones. Serviceable to scout out this new world beyond Its domain. The furthest range it could travel so far with these two drones, thus sustained by Its leaves, was two days of travel out. Any further and It risked stretching Its limbs farther than they could bear.
Unsteadily, It controlled a drone to walk forth. Stumbling every few steps, It quickly learned how to control these limited limbs. Manipulating the arms, It controlled the drone to rip out its tongue and quickly staunch the flow of blood. Tossing the mangled tongue to the ground carelessly, It sent the drone towards the tall metal buildings in the distance.
Pleased with Itself on sending a drone to collect information, It redirected Its attention back towards the second drone. It sent a limb through this drone's body, collecting information on the makeup of this body. It scanned the organs straight down to the individual strands of DNA. Experimentally, the main core of It pulsed faster and faster, and a pustule like growth grew out of Its side.
The ripping noise of flesh sounded out as a baby like human tore Its way out of the pustule. The eyes opened, devoid of emotion and stood. It was pleased yet again. Its experiment proved successful. Quickly more pustules grew out and silently. Row by row, standing, eyes eerily facing one direction 100 such “babies” stood. They all faced the nearest city.
Soon, It would have enough energy to support sending these “babies” towards that city and expand Its domain. But not yet, it needed more trees. The second drone sat on the side, already forgotten. The drone whimpered silently.
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The first drone finally reached the city upon the ending of the first day of its travel. It stumbled into the city, blood drenching the front of its clothing and face. Horrified, the first person walked up and supported the drone.
“Sir, are you okay? You’re covered in blood! Let me call an ambulance!” The man said.
The drone stared blankly but opened its mouth as if to speak, but all that could be seen was a missing tongue.
“Oh god! What happened to your tongue?! Excuse me? I need an ambulance now!” The man pushed the drone down to sit on the ground. It complied. Within moments, an ambulance rolled up and a paramedic hopped out and rushed towards the drone. It decided now would be a good time for the drone to lose conscious and thus ordered it so.
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It commanded the drone to awaken just as the next dawn approached. Noticing the drone’s awakening, a lady left the room and quickly returned with a man.
“Good morning, uh… Mr.Albert, can you give me a nod if you understand me?” A man asked.
It stared through the drone, looking over the motions of the mouth and tongue closely. Back in the forest deep underground It proceeded with Its next experiment.
Simultaneously, all 100 of the “babies” said, “Good morning, uh… Mr.Albert, can you give me a nod if you understand me?” It was pleased yet again.
Back in the room, the man could be seen scribbling onto a clipboard, muttering to himself as he did so, “Patient awake but not responsive to name. Possible brain damage” The man took a few more notes after glancing at the machines surrounding Mr.Albert and quickly left the room. The nurse followed soon after.
It was pleased, It felt that It had successfully infiltrated the society of the dominant species of this planet. After collecting information on how much of a threat this species possessed it would move on to the next phase. But before then, it would have to lay low. It decided that Mr.Albert being unable to speak would not be optimal to obtain information, there was the possibility that Mr.Albert would fight for control and alert others of its species but that was a risk It was willing to risk. Although that was initially why It had torn the tongue out.
Accelerating the growth of cells far past what would be humanly possible, a new tongue quickly grew out of his mouth. As It rooted through the brain network of Mr.Albert for a rudimentary understanding of the local language, the body spasmed wildly and the monitors hooked up to him went off before It finally stopped, satisfied by the knowledge it now possessed. Moments later the previous doctor and nurse rushed back in only to see the monitors now displaying a stable patient.
“He-hello?” Mr.Albert said. The doctor stared in shock.
“His tongue is healed? When he came in his tongue was completely ripped out right?! And he’s clearly conscious now… Maybe he was a bit out of it when I first came in?” The doctor said. He turned to the nurse and his notes before quickly bringing his attention back to Mr.Albert.
“Ummm...” The nurse said.
“Do you know why your tongue healed?” The doctor asked. Mr.Albert stiffly shook his head.
“He doesn’t know how he healed so fast… Maybe an instinct type mage?” The doctor whispered to himself. It would not have caught the doctor’s words had It not enhanced Mr.Albert’s hearing to the limit based on the genetic information available to It. It was confused, there was no term such as instinct type mage in any of Mr.Albert’s memories. It rooted through Mr.Albert’s brain again to double-check which caused the man to spasm uncontrollably. It stopped rummaging through his brain when the second pass came up with no knowledge yet again. It found Mr.Albert lying down on the hospital bed yet again, with the doctor’s hand hovering inches from Mr.Albert’s brain, specks of light continued to escape from the doctor’s hand. Without hesitation, Mr.Albert bit the doctor and It stretched Itself through Mr.Albert and into the doctor.
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Without wasting any time, It quickly moved to seize control of the doctor’s brain before Its advance was halted from a different dimension. The doctor's face scrunched in pain as light slowly escaped from his eyes. It was confused, according to Mr.Albert there shouldn’t have been any way for beings from this planet to operate on a different dimension. But here was a situation contrary to that, It understood that it would have to find a more suitable source of information. Like this doctor.
The main core of It pulsed wildly as it sent more limbs through its own dimension to assist in the take over of the doctor.
All of a sudden, all resistance on the doctor’s face faded and it returned to a calm blank slate before immediately tearing up in pain as It rummaged through the doctor’s brain while recording his genetic makeup while It had the time.
And finally, It understood. A different tier in humanity, a step in evolution from humans to reach towards higher dimensions. The doctor called its own species as mages. Some mages were more mature and were very capable of dealing and even traversing through the fourth dimension, appearing to normal people to be capable of teleportation when it was simply walking through a different dimension to appear at a different axis in the third dimension.
The doctor seemed to think Mr.Albert was just a newborn mage, called the instinct type, because all interactions with the fourth dimension weren’t done consciously. It had to reconsider Its choices now. It had believed that humans were only capable of using weapons like firearms. Nukes had the possibility of being harmful even in different dimensions as energy traveled through the different dimensions in strange manners, but that was not something It deemed a threat.
The appearance of mages, however, was a different story. If there was a human evolved enough to reach the dimension that It housed Itself in, that could become dangerous. For now, It would have to retreat with this new drone. It controlled Mr.Albert and the Doctor to stand and leave the hospital and begin the trek back towards the red forest.
It had initially wanted to use Mr.Albert to gain knowledge, but if there were beings capable of spotting It before it reached the full potential of Its power, that would be of no use to It. It needed to use this planet as a power source for future endeavors.
It quickly recalled the “babies” and remodeled them according to the Doctor’s genetic makeup so that they too could become capable of making use of the fourth dimension. While It could use Its own powers to mimic such abilities, if they appeared without Its meddling, It would be able to fool the inhabitants of this world better.
But first, It would consolidate Its power before sending the Doctor out to a mage settlement to gather information from more mature mages. Focusing Its attention back to Its body of red trees, in the two days that had passed the red forest had visibly doubled in size, greatly enhancing the energy available to It.
If a being capable of looking through different dimensions saw this forest, they would truly be shocked. The trees seemed to grow through each other, and even doubling themselves over the same position multiple times over. Even the way the light hit the trees was strange as different wavelengths of light were caught at different dimensions. In essence, the forest had more than doubled in size. Such a glaring atrocity to nature would have surely caught the notice of any mature mage, but It did not know that this was abnormal. This was normal for It, and It had no knowledge available to It to know that such a transformation was an abomination of the natural order. The Doctor was not a newborn nor a mature mage, simply an adolescent, thus the knowledge available still paled in comparison to what was truly out there.
It burrowed deeper into the crust of the Earth. Even across the multiple dimensions, the core of It seemed to grow even more distant. Such a distance becomes manageable now that is had such energy available. For now, it would focus on distance before establishing a faction among the mages and maybe the humans.
The flesh of It pulsed in an emotion similar to that of displeasure. The shockwaves of Its anger could be felt from the many dimensions it resided in, but it quickly stilled itself as its emotion reached the fourth and lower dimensions. It disliked being restrained to moving in tempo with time local to this area, but It had no choice.
The flesh of It trembled again in anger, before stilling quickly. It would create a force formidable enough to deal with such paltry issues soon enough. Pulling data from Its own flesh it focused Its attention on the “babies”. It needed to be able to spread Its influence without doing so consciously like the forest It had modified. It slightly changed the genetic makeup of the “babies” yet again. So while capable of acting and looking like an adolescent mage on the outside, the inside would be completely remade. Passively absorbing light waves at even higher dimensions while not as efficient was a sneaky way to get energy, red leaves blended itself through Its new creation. Viewed from a higher dimension the red leaves burst from the flesh at the eyes and any other orifice, and at the highest of dimensions, the leaves could be seen completely covering the body. These “babies” would be able to easily subvert newborn mages and humans without Its support, for the creations that come in contact with an adolescent or mature mage It would step in Itself for the subversion.
It was pleased. Even viewed from the fourth dimension Its creation looked normal. The perfect cover had been created now, to infiltrate human and mage society. Before It stood 100 seemingly normal humans, however, after a bit of observation it could be observed that something was off. Perhaps it was the fact that there was not even a sliver of an indication of movement or maybe it was the fact that the chests did not rise and fall. Or maybe it was the ethereal quality of them all. Off to the side, three drones stood out like a sore thumb. It singled out the Doctor, it would need the Doctor to put a word in for the 100 adolescent mages who appeared from nowhere.
It rummaged through the memories it had of factions. As far as It understood, big factions had thousands of newborns, about 100 adolescents, and a single mature mage. Therefore, the appearance of 101 adolescent mages would be sufficient for a moderately powerful faction that wouldn’t be unduly bothered. Its first move would be to single out a single mature mage and overpower him or her with Its army and Itself.
It took another moment to think. If 100 adolescent mages was already considered a large force, then the rate of evolution for humanity truly was quite slow, the time it would take for humanity to fully step into the next dimension would take at least a million years.
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It blinked opened its eyes. According to human customs, its name was Bob. While it sounded like a false name and was completely generic, Bob liked its name. It was the runt of the litter after all. Therefore, this normal name fit it perfectly. Even in the magnanimity and power of It, even in Its perfection, Bob was weaker than his 99 other siblings.
Bob explored his own powers and reveled in the senses available to him only because of It.
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It was pleased. It had initially sent Mr.Albert to find more information in what humans called 2001, but was then set back 18 years. The implementation of humans and the data that made up It was complex and had taken time; but now, nothing would stop it.
Its forest didn’t seem to have grown much, but the forest had definitely grown far more in-depth than it was possible for the mind to understand.
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It was pleased. A year after releasing its minions and they were entrenched within society. The establishment of Its own faction within the evolved humans was proceeding as planned. With a number of natural disasters, it was able to easily gain the trust of the local authorities when Its minions lent their aid.
Since it had solidified Its position, it would be the perfect time to spread Its influence. Through the tethers is created it spread Its command. The faction would begin recruiting more members, who would be specially inducted.
Perhaps It would oust some members under the guise of betrayal to begin spreading Its influence into the larger factions. Already, Its control had reached many leading figures within humanity, it was only a matter of time before the mages fell to It.
In addition, It had more room to grow Its forest. The territory of Its faction was free for It to use. And thus, multiple cores were created, greatly reducing the chances of being obliterated in one fell swoop. With such a large network It was able to spread Its influence passively to the parts of humanity that held no power. Only going about their days as little drones, little cogs in the great machinery of their society.
With this, the majority of humanity had already fallen to It. If It really wanted to, it could simply order for a massive rush from humanity on the mages, but It was displeased. That would simply not be fit for entertainment. It wished to witness the despair during the mages' last moments in the world. That moment when they finally realized that planet Earth had fallen to It.
And then It would finally begin to spread Its reach across the stars, all over this galaxy, all over this universe. And maintain Its foothold here as Its anchor as it conquered dimension by dimension. It would slowly pincer in the remaining dimensions from the lowest of the low to the highest of high. Nothing would escape Its grasp.
But first, the mages. Change of plans, It no longer wished to play with this world. It ordered the destruction of the mages. Almost simultaneously, missiles were launched by almost every human military, each one targeted to eliminate areas where the mages had holed up.
With this planet conquered, it could finally move on.