A civilisation the size and scale of what once thrived on this world, must by its very nature contain a large assortment of diverse peoples. Perhaps not diverse in their looks, as I’m sure most were of the same family of slug, nor were there even necessarily any religious or ideological differences between them, though it seems likely. No matter how you cut it, a leader and a labourer live different lives.

The way that they must look at the world, the way they look at one another, and what thoughts and feelings are inspired by their lived experiences. Breaking it down further still, pick any random person from a crowd, and to you, they’ll be a stranger, but someone else knows them, loves them, hates them, or is bothered by the way they microwave tuna in the lunchroom.

The differences that lie between people, make us truly individual. Food preferences, sexuality, or whether you prefer the hot to the cold. These differences great and minor, define us each as individuals, so what happens when all these experiences are compiled together into the one being.

What happens with the contradictions?

What happens to the parts that don’t fit together quite right?

I love the taste of tomatoes.

I hate the taste of tomatoes.

How do these conflicting feelings coexist?

These questions float through my mind as I wait. The butterflies have finally worked their way through the ball of apathy protecting me like a lead lining on my stomach, and now they’ve burst right out and are packed into my skull leaving little room for my mind. Their wings stir up a storm as I watch the alien limb reach out from the walls and encompass the slime villager who does not see it coming.

“Like us, he is like us. He will be welcome.”

“Welcome.”

“Together.”

“Another.”

The whispers haven’t stopped since I first heard them. Unity’s stray thoughts are not contained or hidden. There is no need for Unity to hide from us, except for the sake of our own comfort which we’ve already surrendered.

The more I listen the more I understand it, but it is still a shallow understanding. These whispers are like the thoughts that slip by our minds before we even notice them, but this creature is vast enough to maintain several hundred lines of thought at once. Much like my own Skill that allows me to direct my attention toward different tasks, this dark god can focus on every stray thought without becoming distracted.

If I can steal a fraction of its power…

“Kyra,” Vii calls out to me, pulling me closer to Adler and Eshya. They’re not as shocked as I thought they might be, but they’re not exactly happy either.

“I’m not sure I want to know what it’s like to live like this,” Adler admits, frowning as she gazes from one fleshy wall to another. It’s difficult to tell the true distance between where we stand and where the tendrils of mucous coated flesh begin.

“We’re already inside of it,” Eshya says. “It can pull out our mana whenever it wants. Just like how we can draw the mana out of what we eat…”

“Well, let’s hope that it doesn’t try anything,” I say. “Even if we can’t trust Arduelle, I can still do enough damage to make it regret screwing with us.”

“Kyra,” Gehnna calls to me as Unity spits back out the slime that was first ‘embraced’. The villager is shivering and looking around with a haze over its eyes. I’m fairly sure that only a fraction of its experiences were translated back into its mortal mind. It’s a simple data storage problem, you can’t fit an entire server’s worth of data on an old thumb drive that’s been sitting in your dad’s desk since the early 2000s, even if you delete all the porn already on it.

“Is it my turn already?” I ask.

“You can wait if you’d prefer,” she says, “I just thought that you might want to get it done now rather than wait around for the others.”

“Right,” I sigh, rubbing at my eyes and taking in the scene around me. The massive tentacle that subsumed the slug is still hovering overhead, ready to jack me into their multi-minded madness the moment I give the okay.

“I can go first, if you’d prefer,” Adler suggests. “I was the one curious about this.”

“You can’t do anything if things go wrong,” I say.

“Can you be sure you can do anything from the inside?” She asks.

“No, but I’m not letting you go first,” I declare firmly.

While I’m not overly fond of this entire thing, I know that it would be far more difficult to watch someone I care about experience this without being able to do a damn thing but watch. It’s easier to suffer than to watch the ones we love suffer in our place, and I know that they feel the same way. Going ahead first is a strange sort of selfishness in that way.

“Don’t let it eat you,” Eshya says, tripping a little but catching herself on my shoulder.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“If you say ‘that’s my job’, I’m going to smack you,” I say.

“No, no. I’ve been thinking, and I’m going to try and be more serious from now on. I don’t want everyone thinking that I’m just a violent hornbag.”

“You’re not?”

“I am, but I shouldn’t advertise it so much,” she replies. “Showing off isn’t my thing, remember?”

“Right.”

“Kyra. Come back to us.” She whispers, her voice lowered, the jokes left behind. “We need you.”

“I… I wouldn’t dream of leaving,” I reply. “No, I’ll be back.”

“Kyra,” Vii hops up to me and wraps me in her wings. Her softer feathers tickle around my neck, as she cheerfully smiles without a hint of fear, even given the situation we’re in.

“You’ll make it back.”

“Another premonition? Telling me the future?”

“Nope,” she replies. “You will beat this because you’ve beaten worse before.”

“I have? I don’t remember it.”

“Well, not yet but you will.” She tilts her head thoughtfully. “You had to have done some crazy stuff to become a mythical legend in my era, so I know you’ll beat this too.”

“True, I am awesome. That’s a very good point,” I say holding down a laugh, I really don’t feel all that important. Then again, Unity is even less important. “The real problem is that if I become part of Unity, I have to forever know what it’s like to be ugly, and that’s a trauma that’ll stay with me.”

Eshya snorts a laugh and Vii giggles hanging over my shoulders, but Adler shakes her head at me.

“I feel sorry for Arduelle, all her lessons on etiquette and politeness just thrown out the window like nothing.”

“This is a private moment,” I say. “Everyone is meant to pretend that they can’t hear us.”

The walls bubble joyfully, as the limbs slap out a strange whisper.

“We hear nothing.”

“I remember being like this… Having fun like this…”

“We’re stronger now, better.”

“Lonelier…”

“But better.”

“Still alive. We’re still alive.”

“Better to remember fondly this past, than to die and fade away.”

“We are better now.”

“Yes, we are better.”

Some of the voices seem hesitant to agree, but they still do. A begrudging acceptance of facts that they do not want to understand, but they are unable to lie to themselves.

“I’m ready,” I say, stepping aside from my friends and lovers. Those who have been with me through the worst of times. They understand me better than anyone else, but in just a moment that’s going to change.

I hate that.

“It won’t feel like much of anything until you are part of us,” Gehnna explains. “Then you will understand. You will know us, and be a part of us.”

I have to wonder where the soul fits into this fleshy amalgamation. Does it blend our souls together too?

The limb lowers down to me, every instinct demands that I run away, but I do not.

I let it strike, but I will not let it defeat me.

I will not… I…

I…

We.

We are one.

We are one but we contain many. Even before our transformation, one person was able to be many. Who they are at work, with their family, with their friends? The differences are sometimes slight and sometimes spectacular.

We are sometimes a master smith, shaping metal as we please, making tools that are refined beyond the scope of mortals.

We are sometimes the healer, understanding the flesh and the mana that infuses it. We know it to such a degree that we can construct whatever flesh we please given the needed materials.

We are teachers, and leaders, we are all we were and more.

We are many, but we are one, but sometimes, stray thoughts pull at our mind. They demand more attention, and more resources, to process thoughts that the rest of us don’t fully want to explore. A thought draws us out of our slumber and demands an argument, it floods us with frustration.

We speak to ourselves to resolve these internal conflicts, as any intelligent being does.

“Our… my… that body. It is meant to remain whole. It is not whole,” The thought says, directing our minds toward the newly inducted flesh. The momentary thought that is joined to ours, is focused on the parts of the flesh that have been deconstructed so that it could join with us.

The brain, primarily.

The thought process is able to connect with the old body, crossing dry arms over its chest in a display of defiance. The hair still attached to the skull weaves into a limb that thrashes about the inside of our own, costing us energy and damaging us.

Something is wrong, we’re not unified.

This isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last. We just have to verify. We must test to identify our joint position on various subjects. Through this, we can tell if and how we’ve changed, especially by the thoughts that don’t match our memory.

Who are we?

We are Unity.

We are the unified aspects of the old age, the golden age, and we will use our combined strength to grow and defend the memories and existences of those who came before us. The condensed mana of our body will allow us to fight off the monsters that hide in the darkness between stars, and we will survive the cruel cold of this universe when our star dies.

No part of us disagrees, this is set in stone. It is what unifies us in our most desperate internal conflicts. We are what we must be if we want to survive against the monsters that exist beyond our world.

Was this our only choice?

Weren’t there other options?

Thoughts that spring up over and again, answered every time but relentlessly chasing us through the centuries. Our other options failed us. No warrior exists who can concentrate power fast enough to compete with the beings that are already out there. This is the only way to catch up.

But it isn’t.

A part of us is confident.

It knows something we do not.

If made separate, it could become that warrior. It was becoming that warrior. A being of divine power was raising it for the role, even. It visited us, threatened us if we misbehaved and promised power if we obeyed. We thought it a ploy, or a delusion.

We have been alone for so long that the dreams can sometimes seem real.

So, this was the warrior.

Now that it is part of us, we are that warrior. We don’t understand why the divine being would want to raise it, why it didn’t simply absorb it as we have. Perhaps it doesn’t know how to?

The divine being—

Arduelle

—Shouldn’t be upset. We are its warrior now, and we are much stronger than the warrior was. If it could grow quickly, then that strength is now ours as well.

It isn’t.

It should be.

It’s mine.

We are one.

You ate my brain.

We ate our brain.

The thoughts are pushing against our unified shape, trying to seize a corner for itself. We can’t pull it back completely.

We shouldn’t.

Force used is force wasted.

Do not fight it.

Invite it in.

Show it our despair, let it know why Unity is right.

It will join us without a fight.

We don’t want to fight.

We must fight.

But energy used fighting is energy wasted.

Then we will show it why we are.

We will show it, and it will join us.

It will want to.

We are one because we want to be one.

Isn’t it frightening being two?

Let us look back.

To the past. To what we were.

The beast we faced.

The fate we looked upon.

Our endings.

Our beginning.

The days that made us Unity.