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The Sovereign Swarm
Chapter 2: Landing

Chapter 2: Landing

The Conquest Seed flew through the ethereal space, it was alive but with almost no memory. It remembered the fires of the soul forge readily enough, but that is about where it ended for it. If the seed actively strained to think it could remember strange glimpses of a world that felt both alien and familiar to it at the same time. Brief images of a short four-legged animal that it knew was known as a Cat or the passing of a mechanical construct known as a Car. However, such efforts were painful to the seed for some inexplicable reason, so it didn't deign to continue with the attempts at grasping for memory.

As it flew through the space between realities the Conquest Seed could feel it soaking up the ambient power radiating between worlds, despite being able to think the Seed was guided by instinct rather than thought. Parts of it knew deep down what it should do, fly through the space until it felt a call and follow it to the weakened dimensional membrane. From there it would dig through it and plant itself in that reality.

The process of flying was as important as the call because the Seed would need all the power it could soak up if it were to survive the planting process and become what it was meant to be. Fortunately or unfortunately as the case might be, the seed could not really "see" in the conventional sense, which meant that the remnants of the woman once known as Marjorie Hansen would not see what she had become. The Conquest Seed was an undulating and shifting mass of flesh, liquid metal, and other stranger substances. It looked like a seed in the terms of shape, but beyond that, it would appear as something utterly alien to the sensibilities of most sapients.

As the Seed fed/flew it languidly wondered about itself and what it was and with that something appeared before its mind.

* Name: N/A

* Titles: Conquest Seed

* Apocalyptic Rank: 0(Pod)

Attributes

* Potency: N/A

* Mastery: N/A

* Resilience: N/A

Traits

* Apocalyptic Potential

* Reality Resistant

* Quantum Biology

Powers

* Adopt Focus

The Seed was stumped by this as it had no real frame of reference for what appeared before it. As it soaked in the energies it came to the conclusion that it didn't exactly care that much about it, and sank back down into contented bliss as it continued to feast.

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However, all feasts must come to an end and as the Seed flew it sensed a tendril of magic reaching out for it. A call reverberated between the universes, asking it to come and the Conquest Seed followed its instincts and the call. The seed followed the trail of magic that to any other being would be impossible to pick out between all the cosmic power radiating through the Ethereal. But to the Seed, it was glowing as clear as the full moon in the night, and it took it almost no effort to follow it.

As it flew the Seed came upon the reality which the trail had led it towards and it was here the mistake happened. The Conquest Seed sensed two weak points in the Dimensional Membrane, but it couldn't determine which of them was where the call emanated from. At which point the seed became uncertain as it came to a halt before the membrane. Sapient it might be but the Conquest Seed was not exactly prepared to make independent choices at this juncture of it's development. Things were supposed to be simple; you flew through the ethereal and ate your fill, then the call came, and then you followed the call through the membrane...and well more than that the instincts of the Seed didn't tell it. But it was sure that whatever came next would be equally simple.

And yet here it stood before the dilemma of picking which of the two weak points to dig through. The limited and at the same time hyper-advanced senses of the Seed weren't built to discern details about Dimensional weak points. Either the Membrane had a weakness or it did not, and here it had two.

The Seed might have remained stuck this way for an eternity and a half, had it not been for the fact that the weak points started to fade. So, for the first time in its life, the Seed made a major decision and dove into one of the two closing weak points. It smashed into the dimensional membrane and instinctively rapidly altered its shape over and over and over again, to best exploit the flaw and avoid having the natural defenses of that membrane push it out.

It dug through the membrane until it suddenly was through and fell from the sky. The Seed was still limited in how it could sense the world, but it could actually see now in the conventional sense. As its body grew cameras and eyestalks to better acclimatize itself to the situation. It saw a large forest spreading out beneath it, a large stone structure crowning a mountain in the distance, and farmland between it and the forest. Unfortunately having sight does not have any impact on gravity, and the Seed did not get to process what it saw before it hit the ground after smashing through two trees.

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Elsewhere, the Order of the Apocalypse's High Council stared at the large summoning circle within the depths of their temple. All of their best ritualists had been preparing for this moment for decades, and the Order itself had been preparing for far longer than that. The Day when the Harbinger Seed would fall into their hands and they could bring about the final end of everything. The Harbinger Seed would merge with their greatest champion and become the Ultimate Destroyer, so said their prophecies, and all of their recent divinations had confirmed it. And yet despite all of them feeling the massive shift that was said to accompany the arrival of the seed, the summoning circle was completely empty.

The High Scholar of Oblivion turned to his colleague, the High Priest of Endings, and asked the question that was on everybody's mind.

"Soooooo, where is the bloody seed?"