"Its mind is slippery. It has been changed by too many forces and now flows without restraint." said a massive star-shaped geode-like being that slowly floated deeper through the expanses at random. Tethered spikes of nearly unbreakable matter would rush from holes in its surface to feed, whipping its hooked victims back towards its awaiting cage-like maw at the back of its body. It was built like a roving fortress, fearless and indomitable. It was huge, the fourth largest of the remaining seven.

"Let it flow. Who knows, it might capture a new way of existing." said a truly immense being made entirely of expanding gelatinous cells, tentacles, and gaping sinkhole maws. True to its nature, it flowed and captured any creatures in its way, making the landscape into a hellish never-ending expanse of feasting. Of the seven, the slime was the largest of them all, covering extremely immense distances with its ever-expanding body.

"I suggest we dissect and use it for our purposes. Cultivate its mind and plant seeds to grow and spread us." said an Eldritch abomination of a creature. Where the geode was formed from crystals and rocks, this creature was formed from legs and wriggling limbs that propelled itself rapidly toward any living thing that caught its massive Omni eye centered in the middle of its infected-looking body. Any unlucky creature that caught its notice would be quickly and expertly converted into its expendable minion, infested with cells that would cannibalize and zombify its new host. These new puppets would rove and fight until an internal timer would cause them to self-destruct, spreading their infested cells to new hosts. The Eldritch made this suggestion, not out of hostility towards Kevin, but simply because it was acting on its nature.

I heard the voices speaking as though I was laying back on my hospital bed still in complete darkness. The difference now though, was that I could see glimpses of each speaker's nature and thoughts whenever they would speak, drawing my attention towards their minds and pulling me inside. It was a bizarre and odd experience, almost as though with each moment of exposure to their inner thoughts, their overpowering nature was infecting me.

I prayed that wasn't the case. I didn't want to start thinking of everyone I met as though they were a host to infect my will upon.

"It is afraid." came a soft voice that sent shivers through my soul as my awareness immediately focused itself on the speaker and rushed towards its mind. A softly glowing being unlike any I had ever witnessed floated slowly through darkness. No, that wasn't right… it created darkness around itself, turning off or completely absorbing the ambient energy continually provided by every material in its dimension. Just this act alone caused many of the natural inhabitants to flee before its movements, fearing the loss of life-giving energy. It was ghostlike, made of seemingly delicate tendrils of toilet paper streamers that gently floated around its body as it moved. Of the seven, it seemed to be the smallest, simply a creepy rippling form that almost seemed corporeal. It sported a head... if a warped birdlike skull that was merged with its torso could be called a head. The head didn't have any eyes, simply sporting sockets where eyes might have been. Its chest seemed to be made of rippling thin flesh over delicate ribs and pulsing folds that resembled gills. In the direct center of its upper chest, there was a golf ball-sized hole that was surrounded by blue pulsing light. The blue light and softly glowing flesh made the being give off the impression that it was just like an Anglerfish, tempting fearless creatures in for a tasty meal.

The hole in its chest made me think that it might have actually contained another of those small ball-sized relics that the dead male swarm each held. Could these balls serve a purpose to these fearful creatures?

"And able to learn and question its surroundings it seems."

Touching this ghostlike creature's mind made me want to drain the life from every living creature around me. Life was tasty. I could feel my soul trying to fight against this nature, it wasn't my true nature at all, yet the power of its suggestion was ageless and insidious.

"I sense in its memories that it has met one of my children." came a low rumble in the darkness. The voice was so low and mighty that I could almost imagine the ground shaking and earthquakes forming simply from its presence.

As my mind rushed towards this new voice, I felt a sense of relief at having been pulled away from the ghost-like being. Relief that lasted only as long as it took my mind to bridge the unknown distance to the new mind. This new creature was dying and all it felt was pain.

"Yes, strange child, I am perishing. I grew too large, and my spread has been unable to keep me fully protected." the steadfast and powerful voice said as I became aware of its nature. It was a Leva, or rather, the original parent of all the Leva within the cosmos in my dimension. Its spread within this dimension resembled Levasuckers, powerful serpents of fire that were tasked with protecting their master. Yet it seemed that in the distant past they had failed time and time again, allowing wounds to form from attacks on the side of the great wyrm. These wounds had become havens for invasive colonies of creatures to exist within. Its great and lengthy body now looked like sharks had taken bites from its extensive tail. Most of the damage seemed to surround spots where many photon bulbs used to be, its main defense against creatures wishing to attack it.

"Why don't you enlist the aid of one of your brethren here? Surely one of these other creatures could help you to rid yourself of the parasites that infest your flesh." I asked, finally finding my voice as I was filled with the great dragon's strength.

"It speaks to us! Pull them in, make the trade!" Came a voice in the darkness that tried to pull me away from the powerful mind that I was currently inside, but I resisted its pull, thanks to the willpower that my mind was swimming inside. It felt that the longer I remained, the stronger my willpower grew.

"Child of Earth, human male, I would have asked for aid long ago if it were possible. But alas, the distances between myself and my fellow siblings are so vast and fraught with danger that we are sure I would perish before I could get close enough. Thank you for your concern though, and for the priceless memories of your time with my daughter whom you have taken into your care." the mind rumbled as it tried to show me just how far apart it was from any of the other six.

What it showed me was like a map, and a slap in the face of my understanding. All that I had seen so far of their dimension was similar to a tiny capillary inside a human body, the smallest of blood vessels. The area, or window, that I had seen that led to the Void was just one of many cut-off sections that were connected to other branching sections leading to the same wound that split their dimension in half. No wonder this massive Leva King could exist, there were vast expanses that I had yet to see that would allow it to roam and hunt freely.

"Blood vessels yes, but the Creators tried to sear the wound, to seal the infection completely away. Alas, they failed." Came the voice that had earlier commented about me speaking. Could this creature have the answers that I needed? Each time I entered one of their minds, I got a clearer picture of how they existed and why they were created. This new creature seemed to be talkative and able to answer some of my questions.

"Hello, could you please tell me more? What did your Creators do?" I asked as I let my mind move towards where I had heard the voice originate. Because of the drone's amazing memory, which was now a part of my mind, I could easily remember where each of the minds that I had visited before and how to return to them again.

"Yes, no, you made the trade." came the voice as it allowed me to approach it.

"What?" I said as I felt our minds touch and felt its nature sweep through me. "No? What do you mean? What trade?"

"Of us all, it is the most broken" the Leva King spoke as I was filled with the strangest feelings inside my mind and being. It felt like I was experiencing waves of emotion, memories, and even time that didn't line up with what I should be feeling or what was going on around me. What the Leva King said was true, this creature was even worse off than he was. The image that I gathered of its body was one of a massively tall Skii lumbering through vast mountains. Its chest was gutted and all that remained of its core was red pumping veins and arteries that somehow traced through the hollow expanse of its chest to various other parts of its body. Even its limbs were just veins below the elbow with the red pulsing blood vessels dangling towards the ground as it walked.

"Oh, I know your kind. Are you Skii?" I asked as I grew nervous about how I was supposed to communicate with this creature. The last time I spoke to a Skii I managed to get their whole tribe unloaded into my care. I was not interested in having something happen like that again.

"Wait! Maybe I could unload them on this guy?" I wondered as I felt a rush of heat flow through me, followed by nausea, and the smell of root beer. "What are you doing inside my memories?" I asked as I tried to focus. This thing's mind was awash with images and places that had no cohesion. Slowly order formed through the chaos and I observed a spear of silver liquid shoot a great distance and penetrate into one of the creatures of the Void. It easily ripped through its dark squirming mass and punched out through the other side. Within the silver liquid's writhing grasp was a brightly shining ball of jelly. The silver liquid began to attack the radiant mass of angrily squirming light, devouring its luster with thousands of needlelike tendrils of silver until it was lightless, just an empty shell. Even the image of the shell faded until it completely vanished. The next image that I saw was the silver liquid flying to land on a tray that vaguely resembled an egg carton. With perfect placement the silver material landed inside one of the cutouts before flying away, leaving the impression that it had dropped something small and spherical off.

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Did I just witness the creation of a relic? What kind of weapon was that silver liquid to be able to harvest the core of one of the Void creatures? Why hadn't they used that weapon to kill all of the Void and to prevent the need to sacrifice half of their dimension?

"Do you wish to see?" The Great Skii asked, not following my thoughts or questions. It felt like, whatever this creature did, it wasn't in tune with reality. I knew that it had just asked me a question and that I had to succinctly answer either with a yes or a no if it acted in any way as its offspring did. Did I want to see? Yes, yes, I supposed that I did. Would saying yes be so bad? I had no way of knowing so I decided to simply answer.

"Yes, I would like to see. What are you going to let me see? What can't I see now?"

"You are infected with a living Void seedling. You have a path. Questions, questions, questions."

"What? Hey, wait a second, if you are trying to sell me something, then the answer is no until I fully understand what you are trying to say." I said as I felt a rushing feeling pass through my mind. It felt like I had just gone cliff diving and was rapidly plummeting towards the waters below.

"Come away, little human, before it breaks your mind as well." called the voice of the Leva King, causing me to feel a rush of fear. What had the ancient Skii been doing inside my mind? It felt like it had been mixing up the pieces to the puzzle that made up my memories.

"If he breaks and dies, can I reclaim him and my swarm?" came a new voice inside the darkness. A voice that resonated strongly within me and made me imagine getting my head bitten off.

I pushed with my willpower to leave the mind, intent on returning to the strength and security of the Leva King's mental fortress. I made it halfway before I was once again inside the mind of the ancient Skii. It felt like I had never really tried to leave, that that action was just a figment of my imagination.

"My creators, ever searching for knowledge, once traveled between the five dimensions neighboring this one. We live in a fruitful and plentiful branch of the ^%!Aur. They discovered two paths that could lead outwards towards other, unexplored and more distant neighboring dimensional clusters, and as luck would have it, they chose wrong. They traveled through to the dimension that is now known as $(lis!@ and discovered that the cosmos in this dimension were only populated with seeds of light. Again, as fate would have it, they chose wrong and brought one of these seeds of light back for study."

I felt cold, as though the temperature around me was slowly dropping. What was happening? I didn't want to interrupt the Skii because it was actually finally making sense, but I didn't understand why I was feeling this way. I shouldn't be able to feel anything like this without a body so what was it doing to my mind?

"Just one seed was all it took to result in the sundering of this dimension. Once it germinated, having tasted the infinite flood of energy, the seed quickly grew into its true form. It became a host of death."

Images quickly flooded my mind. Images of aliens of various forms standing around an array of devices and containment arrays. Inside the center of the arrays lay the seed seemingly harmless before a raindrop of darkness shot out toward one of the observing scientists. The darkness bypassed every barrier and shield as though they weren't even there. It struck the scientist in the eye and entered its brain, feasting on his life and memories before producing a tiny duplicate seedling.

In the first instant after the seedling germinated, thousands of onlookers were infested and harvested of their lives to create new seedlings that slowly began to ripple with darkness as they feasted on the ambient energy.

"This first moment caused the mass exodus of my creators from this dimension and the resulting scientific and military battles to attempt to exterminate the invading Void species." The ancient Skii said as answers to the questions bubbling to the surface of my mind were answered before I even had time to ask them.

The creators were not from this dimension originally. They came from a neighboring cluster and only chose to exist and live within this one because of the abundance of energy. It seemed, as they discovered, that the dimensions were built like a tree. The farther out you traveled from the main branch, the less energy each dimension contained. This dimension was a direct link to a powerful branch of the whole dimension. Power was infinite and ever in abundance here. The other neighboring dimensions were all offshoots connected only to this one, meaning that cutting this one off from the other dimensions would mean death to all of them.

This proved to be a curse now that the Void seedling had managed to spread.

The Void spread and broke out of the containment of the science facilities and cities, moving slowly until it could begin to propagate by harvesting natural endogenous ever morphing creatures. As the Void spread, it constantly grew, and the ancient aliens knew that they had a limited amount of time to discover a viable solution. If they didn't find a means to fight, and fast, no future generation of any of the connecting dimensions would be able to travel between dimensions. The Void would create a zone of death, cutting off any travel and quite possibly spreading through holes to neighboring dimensions.

This led them to take some measures that were extreme and to use weapons that should never have been needed to be used.

Everything was freezing. I was having a hard time focusing on the story that the ancient Skii was trying to tell me. I knew that it was vitally important for me to try to push on and to get as much of this knowledge as I could take. I had wanted answers for so long and I was finally getting them.

The answer to fighting the Void came as a surprise. Something that they found as they searched tirelessly through the Void's home dimension.

A singular silver liquid that fed on germinated Void, turning them into small balls of inert Void.

Almost inert anyways.

The Void spheres all still exhibited a connection to other germinated Void, causing the spread of the Void to pause when they were fed experiences of living creatures.

Everything was so cold. Freezing blistering cold.

The solution, the silver weapon, had been found too late and other measures had to be taken to protect the neighboring dimensions. This was when the weapons had been used.

"Come away, little human, before it breaks your mind as well." called the voice of the Leva King, exactly as it had before. I listened this time and pushed my mind away from the freezing grasp of the ancient Skii as hard as I could. Everything, movement, thoughts, and even time seemed to have started to crystalize as I strained mightily to return to the mind of the Leva King.

A noise like the shattering of glass sounded out as I managed to just make it into the powerful mind of the Leva King. I had a terrible feeling that I had just had a close call. Something bad had clearly almost happened to me and my mind.

"If he breaks and dies, can I reclaim him and my swarm?" asked the same voice as before inside the darkness. What was going on? Why were they repeating themselves?

"Reclaim your swarm?" I asked, realizing finally who the being was behind the voice. I had finally met the Hive Mother herself.

"Bring my children to me, they seek the light." the ancient Skii uttered, as though it wasn't aware of my question directed towards the Hive Mother.

"Yes, you know who I am. I also see that you have two of my males easily within your possession. Bring them and yourself to me."

"Ah, yeah, no," I answered.

"Unacceptable."

"Create a new army through us," the ancient Skii continued, sounding like it almost understood what it was saying yet not quite being in the present.

"I agree, that might be a good path to flow. " said the gnashing sea of slime and tentacles.

"Wait, what?"

"Agreed. Time is running out. Two of us will die soon, leaving too few to hold the Void's attention. They will spread again, and the shield will fall." the floating spiky rock creature said.

"We are out of options. Out of time." said the Eldritch abomination.

"WAIT! Just wait!" I yelled, trying to break up their inner circle conversation.

"I can't. I am sorry but I can't help you all. I can't even help myself. I am currently unable to do anything but exist ever since something happened to me near the barrier of the Void."

"We are aware."

"Wait what? So, you know what happened to me?"

"Yes, you were intercepted and encapsulated by a mature Void."

"It is now feasting on your senses."

"Oh no! So, it will spread in my galaxy?" I cried out in fear. Had I doomed everyone that I ever loved to death? Everyone in existence?

"No, it sacrificed its shell and means of reproducing when it forced its way through the barrier. It has bonded with you in exchange for being one of many forced to share what meals we seven can provide."

Despair flooded through my mind as I took in the words being spoken. Then, I had a lightbulb moment.

"But wait, can you let me use the silver weapon to remove it from me?"

"It doesn't work like that. The silver ameba is a predator, just like the Void, albeit of lower intelligence. It feeds on the Void's ability to procreate. Had the Void not sacrificed this ability, it would have attacked and possibly saved you. Just be thankful that it doesn't choose to hunt you down and attack the Void surrounding you now because you are encased in the center and its… feasting process would kill you as well."

"Oh."

"So, what can I do?"

"You can make a trade with us. We will help you to distract your captor if you will, in turn, help us."

"Before you decide, just know that it is only a matter of time before we fail at the task we were created for." said the Leva King whose mind I was gaining strength inside. He was still strong even though he was slowly being eaten alive by invasive creatures. "Whether you accept or not, without something drastic changing, our futures and the futures of every living creature within this dimension are doomed to a horrible fate."

"It is with this understanding, that we all ask for your help in exchange for our aid." all of the voices said as one.

It was then that I made a deal that would dictate the survival of a dimension.

Oh boy…