Mar felt that the production and the ongoing plans for the expansion of their forces left them open to experimenting more than what they had been doing recently. Plants in the ocean were being slowly infected along with some of the local fish, and Mar had even created an Oceanic Crawler over there to help expedite the exploration of the sea. All in all, they had been really productive lately and felt that they deserved to flex with their powers more.
This was why Mar focused their attention on the secret caverns. Not to observe the Workers and Spiderling Engineers at play, but to summon their first new Subjects into the world. Elysian Flesh Mistresses and Awakened Fungal-Floral Scarecrows were options that Mar had not yet begun to play with.
"Which one should I bring to life first?"
It was by some considered a strange habit to talk to oneself, but Mar reasoned that since all life would essentially be them at some point then that norm didn't apply to them. Their new state as simultaneously existing within the entire Swarm and also as a single form within their divine realm had only exacerbated this particular quirk. Mar flicked a hand out as they rested on their divine throne and snapped their fingers. The Flesh Mistress was the most intriguing Subject type that Mar had at their disposal, so they decided to create one of them first.
With a flex of their will, the Power took effect and Mar almost gasped at the strange sensation passing through the Swarm. When creating a Unit things were relatively simple, the Power automatically shaped the body into the standard form of their kind and a tiny sliver was divided of the whole of Mar to form a fragment that would serve as the mind of the creature. Creating a Subject was a far more energy-intensive process and it was much...stranger than before.
First, Mar sensed that they had options to consider before the process would finalize itself. They had 5 different sex categories to pick between, then came the life stage option of Child, Young-Adult, Prime-Adult, and Elder, and lastly came the option of "Tellurian" or "True-Elysian". Rather than fuss over all the options immediately, Mar went for being efficient.
"Standard Female, Prime-Adult, Tellurian."
They did not actually have to verbalize the command, but sometimes it felt good to display that they could control their powers. Some of the honored dead that cowered before their throne flinched as the Sovereign spoke on top of their throne. Mar ignored the spirits inhabiting their domain as their gaze was focused on the cavern and also on how the Power worked within the Swarm.
First, the energy that had been released and then contained finally traveled through the Swarm to the intended summoning spot, Biomass, metal, and stone was consumed to serve as the building blocks, however, the majority of the energy did not go into the creation of the body. No, that force flowed through the Swarm and Mar sensed how it rifled through the millions of memories that were stored throughout the Swarm. Human, animal, and even fungal and plant memories were "consulted" while the magic plucked one of many, many souls that Mar had consumed. The tiny soul speck of a fly was enough as the Power began working on it.
Energy poured into the minuscule speck of a soul and promptly started to expand it. As it worked to expand and reinforce the soul, twisted copies of the memories flowed into it and imprinted themselves on the still-developing brain within the creature. It only took moments for the process to finish and yet to Mar it seemed to take lifetimes as they felt an entirely new mind and soul being added to the collective.
It was unlike any of the human Subjects and seemed more similar to when Mar had created the first Avatars of the Swarm. The Elysian Flesh Mistress was far more holistically connected to the Swarm than any other Subject, even more so than the Units that made up the bulk of their being. It didn't need a fragment to translate and communicate with the remainder of the Swarm on its behalf, she could do it all by herself please thank you.
As the creation process had happened the caverns had been filled with light which faded when a metallic leg stepped onto the dirt and stone. Mar leaned forward in fascination as they saw the first Elysian Flesh Mistress take their first breath and step in their life. She was tall, taller than most of the humans who stood at about 5 feet and her body was far different from their fleshy mass. If Mar was going to compare this creature to anyone then it would be Nasi or the Oceanic Crawler.
The Flesh Mistress was, from a human perspective, a bio-mechanical abomination that should not be allowed to live. She stood on two legs, but her body was a perfect fusion of flesh, metal, and chitin. Out from her body, there were four arms extended, two of which ended in an ever-shifting configuration of mechanical apparatuses, the remaining arms extended into hands. But unlike human hands, these fleshy hands were broader and extended out into two knuckles on each finger. Her head was long and insectile with countless eyes dotted all over the front, sides, and even the back of her skull. Some of the eyes looked human, others seemed to be compound eyes, and others again were cameras cleverly disguised as eyes.
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Mar waited patiently as the first living Flesh Mistress took stock of her surroundings and at the same time reached out to speak to all the nearby fragments with her thoughts. Despite having only been alive for a scant couple of seconds she took to this as easily as breathing and she turned to look at several of the Workers who had been transfixed while watching her birth. She walked over towards one of them with steps as graceful as a dancer and she reached down to cup the head of the pseudo-insect. Immediately after making contact the Subject canted her head and clicked her two mandibles.
"Deficient. I will improve you."
She knelt down and casually jabbed one of her arms with a syringe sticking out into a soft spot in the carapace of the Worker and helped it gently lie down on the cavern floor. Mar had troubles reading the thoughts of an individual mind but they could with some effort glimpse the plans of the Flesh Mistress as she began to twist and shape the flesh of the Unit before her. When she had touched it she had felt a slight weakness in the intestines of Worker as well as some misshapen muscles near the front legs. It would take some effort but it already had the knowledge of how to adjust these things and as such started the process of reshaping the Worker after having sedated it.
It was quite fascinating to see the Flesh Mistress imitate what Mar could do so effortlessly themselves, but they did not begrudge the newborn her work and experiments. Mar would return to observe her later and maybe even attempt to learn her name, they had another Subject type to create and Mar was curious to see how different it would be.
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Mar had fewer options to pick between when creating the Awakened Scarecrow. They had sensed that either they could "infect" a regular Scarecrow by using the Animate Scarecrow power as a vector or create one from scratch like with the Flesh Mistress. As Mar did not have a Scarecrow down in the caverns they had just unleashed the Power as normal. The options to choose between had been simply age and three sex categories: Male, Intersex, and Female.
So a Male, Prime-Adult, Awakened Fungal-Floral Scarecrow had been created. The rest of the process was with one exception practically identical to the creation of the Flesh Mistress. A few hundred insects were sacrificed and absorbed along with the regular Biomass.
They had appeared again or rather a twisted form of musculature had been added to the creature being spawned down in the dark. Out of the shadows, he stepped shortly after having been spawned. A creature with skin made out of cloth and a sack for a head, the body "stuffed" with tough and sinewy plant matter with twisted half-dead insects woven into it to serve as the muscles. It had crimson and snot green eyes with two pupils in each of the two eyes that stared out from the "holes" in the sack.
He had hands extending out of his body, moldy hands that looked as if someone had carved out human hands by wrapping hay around broken branches of a tree and forcing them into that shape. To continue the comparison then the designer of the hands would have had to spill lard or something similar to that over them to make the mold grow so extensively, regardless of how the hands looked. Mar could see that they were dexterous enough, so they didn't particularly care about the unappealing look of them.
An aura of growth and terror radiated out from the creature and with each step, Mar could vaguely sense that the ground grew more nutritious and fit for agriculture. The terror that radiated out from the Subject washed over and off the Swarm like water off a duck's back, but it was still intriguing to note the strange terror coming off the Awakened Scarecrow. Mar would keep it in mind for the future and they did find the aura specialization of this type of Subject to be quite...intriguing.
Mar was only vaguely familiar with the concept of Auras, the memories that were stored in the Swarm along with some glancing through their new reading material had provided some knowledge of the subject. But they were happy that they would no longer have to rely on mere recollections or books to examine the phenomena.
These Subjects would be the ones to populate the underground caverns along with the Workers and Spiderling Engineers. True inhabitants that would convert the caves into a true Settlement as far as their system was concerned. And that would give Mar far more opportunities to work with than what they could have had on their own. So, Mar left their two newest subjects to acclimatize themselves to...existing, and started diverting resources out to spawn even more of them. It would take time but soon these two new species would become plentiful enough to make a real difference in their plans for conquest.