NationStates Jolt Archive

The small asteroid hurtled through space. Unbeknownst to its inhabitants, a massive disturbance in spacetime was wrapped around it, as something known as fate whirled and danced, nudging this asteroid towards its chance encounter...

What if the trajectory had been set a few inches to the left or to the right? What if something had delayed or aborted the flight? What if...a thousand What Ifs struggled to prevent the 'chance encounter'...In vain.

Something fought back. Something suppressed What If? Something had been planning this for millenia, nay, eons, arranging each little thread so that they were a tapestry that culminated in this event.

Have you ever thought that your fate in life, arranged by every environmental and genetic factor, was simply to say a sentence to a stranger, or drop an item somewhere? And that this thing you were fated to do would set in motion a billion other lives that ended up weaving an event that would be remembered in history, to set off a billion other events? What if a vast interplay of events, genes, and people was arranged so that a single angry word from you sent a certain man to kill a certain Archduke, and determine the course of centuries? What is fate, really, and does it think?

Something suppressed what if...

But now we move on to this chance encounter. An asteroid of the Osage Empire was drifting through space, orbiting the blue planet of Earth, covered in oceans, when its drifting took it through something strange. Clouds of spores from something stranger down on the surface of Earth began to attach themselves to the glowing surface of the rock, where tunnels led to the heart, to the wakon'do. On the outside rim, spearmen were milling about, unbeknownst to the horror that was slowly attaching itself to the outside, putting down roots and expanding...

Incredibly slow by human standards, but regardless it seeped into the rock surface like something akin to a virus, collecting in the corners and on the walls, invading every nook and cranny , and, after a few days, it would begin to grow into the core of the asteroid and absorb the heart, the energy itself. The ground would grow hard to walk on, to even move and eventually the Osage would have to confront this new menace one way or the other.

A soldier stabbed the organic mass with his weapon, poking it and searching for signs of life.

"How the hell is it growing in here?"

His comrade, who was dozing lazily, waved him off with a hand. "I dunno. Losyl isn't killing it, though, and it's getting on my nerves." He opened his eyes and peered at the strange stuff that was slowly establishing itself in every nook and cranny of the Osage ship. A third person walked in, yawning, and stepped in the middle of it. "Goddamnit it, where is this stuff coming from? I'm reporting this mess to the captain."


The captain-wakongi of the asteroid was exasperated. He, too, was vexed and wondering where this stuff had come from and how it was growing in rock. Whatever it was, he had assembled the wakongi under him. He then had received complaints, tinged with frustration at being unable to get rid of the stuff.

He suggested fire. So they tried fire. No effect. He suggested lightning, and they went off to try this as an alchemist arrived and analyzed it. His report? "Some sort of fungal thing." Which didn't aid him at all. Then the alchemist returned with large stores of arsenic and hyperdermics to inject it into the stuff in case fire and lightning didn't work, and was properly gone.

Mon'hin, the Tenth Fleet-General was notified, but didn't take much notice, not yet, too wrapped up with peace negotiations to end the war against six Solar nations on Mars.

When the spearman approached the growing mass of fungus,
the larger parts would lash out at them with proportional fury, and the men that got close enough to inject the stuff would quickly be overwhelmed by the fight response of the fungus itself, the poison in question however would only irritate the fungus to the extent that it would speed up its absorbton of the rock beneath it. Slowly And Carefully approaching it would be the most advisable path, though prolonged skin contact could only lead to their eventual death. Down below on the earth itself the great mass of fungus rumbled, as it came to understand the possibilities of its new prey.

The three men earlier moved forward quickly, hyperdermics full of arsenic at the ready.

"The hell?!"

"It's fighting back!"

"It's alive!"

"Hold it down!"

---

The captain got the report later. Three men dead. And the arsenic had only sped it up. The floor, walls, and ceiling were now less rock than they were fungus. It was getting hard to move without stepping in, on, or near a fungus which would then last out at you.

The movement, that was the most disturbing part about it. Nothing for it.

"We're going to have to evacuate." The wakongi assembled nodded.

"And the infantry?" said one kind-hearted soul.

"They will have to be evacuated later." It had a tone of finality to it. Perhaps elsewhere in this system, such an order would be named cruel, malicious, unnecessarily expedient. But in the Empire, the infantry were cast off like a coat when it gets too warm, and they knew it. Centuries, nay, millenia of telling them about their heritage as a proud warrior caste prepared them for this.

"Shall we leave the wakon'do on?" There was something in the air. The head wakongi, being somewhat powerful, thought he heard the sounds of a struggle in some far-off, dreamlike place.

What is Fate, and does it think?

"Yes, leave it on. The alchemists might find some way of killing it. Undoubtedly we shall return soon."

They began to draw signs on the walls, a violet light descended, and then they were gone...

Leaving several hundred men behind to fight the encroaching terror. Most of them just tried to push it back physically with their spears, some set up little walls with their armor, which of course was no kind of barrier at all. Some let the arsenic soak into the ground in hopes that it would make it unlivable for the fungus and so it wouldn't grow there.

And as it continued its advance, some opted to drink the arsenic, ending their struggles.

In the wakon'do chamber, sitting on a vast onyx pedestal, was a small semiprecious stone. Inside it rested uninimaginable power, huge quantities of wakon, soul energy, the fuel that powered the fire and lightning of the Empire. Around the pedestal grew the fungus, spurred on by the arsenic it creeped upwards, upwards, cast in a violet glow by the gently humming vortex of raw power that was the wakon'do. How long till those tendrils reached it, and the energy that pervaded the galaxy was but here concentrated into power flowed through that strange lifeform like a second vein full of a second blood? What could a wakon-capable fungal lifeform conceivably do with it?

Though previously restricted to moving on a timespan of several days, it had grown to such an extent now that it could inch itself through the ship, swarming over the bodies of those that had taken their own lives in a futile effort to escape the overwhelming fungus. And now that it had reached the central chamber, sensing great power within, it picked up the pace and swarmed towards the onyx pedestal, and the small stone it held on top of it.
~~~~
It clutched the stone, agitated by the light, feeling that it had to absorb it, to grow in power, completely aside from having now absorbed a magical asteroid, becoming a spacefaring fungus proper.
It would take a while to fully integrate the magic into itself, but the benefits would fully outweigh any possible concerns parts of itself might have.

The fleet-general listened to the captain's story. "The signature is gone?"

"Yes, lord, gone."

"I thought you said you left the wakon'do on?"

"We did, sir."

Mon'hin Da'pa, the new 10th fleet-general, stroked his chin. Then it clicked. Kasaros' studies, the Underworld...and he said a single word. "Shauma. Its Shauma."

The captain apparently looked confused at the reference to an obscure section of Osage mythology. "Sir?"

"Stay here, captain. Tell no one, for if you do, I must kill you. If I do not come soon, send Asat."

He began to draw, a series of angles and signs...

He moved quickly through the roaring noise of the Between Spaces. The captain might not be able to find the signature, but Mon'hin knew where the tamed wakon was.

He appeared in a flash of light in the unlit wakon'do section, immediately creating a small bubble of air as the fungus began to grapple with him. He figdeted with it for a second before cursing softly and causing huge sections of the ground to rip up and fold over, giving him a temporary platform to stand on. He tried the same things the captain had tried and came up nought.

Then he got an idea. Where it had come from he did not know, but sometimes an Idea, traveling through space, implants itself into one's mind. He peered down at it, and the correlations Kasaros had staked out came back to him again, the correlations he had found unfinished in the man's library.

Shauma. The Food of God and the gods. The substance that makes gods gods. The fruit of the tree.

For they have become like us..., it said in the main Terran religion's book. Kasaros had been mildy interested in it, too, naming the dragons he had gotten from the Brittmattian kingdom after fallen angels from the Book of Enoch. A jealous god, indeed. For they have become like us..., the Elohim said. Don't let them live forever. Cast them out from the Trees.

And now he had found it. Shauma, the Fruit. He reached down, plucked a huge piece, and ate it.

And then he Saw. He saw all colors, and when they combined he saw the Light, the One Light that all others are a pale reflection of, the One Pattern, the Universal Soul, the ultimate intelligence, Everything, All In All (In, he realized, was so important.) All in All.

And he realized more. He knew the comparisons Kasaros had found. Tao, Logos, Dainici-Nyorai, Brahman, Huracain, Nirvana, and a thousand other names besides people had called it. The Osage called it Wakonda, and its energy wakon, some people called wakon the Odic force, or the Theory of Everything, or shakti, or Qi, or prana, or again, a thousand other names besides.

And he hated it. He hated what he saw for entombing True Chaos when it had coalesced out of that same True Chaos, for overlaying its Pattern on everything, for BEING everything, for arranging every mutation, every chance, for lying and being the 'chaos' behind chaos theory that was not chaotic at all. He hated it for the lie of Free Will it propagated.

And most of all he hated himself and the Osage Empire, for using its blood, its energy, to power their ambitions.

He drew his lines, and opened, and walked into the Between Spaces again. The Noise! He knew now! It wasn’t noise at all, but music! Every note a letter, every chord a word in its language! Everyone had music! And none knew! And then he saw it. The bubble-congeries. Bahi’xtsi. It spoke to him, directly into his mind. “You see now, Osage. You see the genius of it? Do you know who I am, Osage? I am its avatar, a facet of the thing, and I am Of the Thousand Masks, nay, millions of masks, sometimes more than once in a single account of my deeds. A thousand faces. Do you know them, Osage? I am the Serpent, Raven, Spider, Coyote, Odin, Thoth, Viracocha, Quetzalcoatl, Siddhartha, Shiva-Pashupati, Pan, Faunus, Cernunnos, Fintan, the Yellow Emperor, Caerwiden, Puck, Death-God-Is-Pleased, and a million other names besides in the Underworld! You know me as Os’ya and Tse’xo’be and the Chief Bahi’xtsi, do you not? And they think me benevolent! I hold my individuality against It because I journey through the universe, ensuring that its power continues to grow through those who realize the one truth, and through this I ensure that its dominance is never contested. In the end, I will strike off its limb, and another one will grow in its place. This cycle has gone on for billions of years. What now, now that you realize your hopelessness, will you do?”

The fleet-general was utterly broken. He murmured silently, contemplating things, digesting information. Had Kasaros known? No, he couldn’t have known. Not this. Not on this scale. Not even Irul Kasaros had known this truth. So what now? Fight…

If the congeries had had a face, it would have smirked. “Fight, will you? You either are stupid, or ignoring the truth. You ARE it, Osage. We all are. Emanations, with the most powerful emanations being the closest to it, and continuing downwards to the smallest virus. All are it, veiled by crude matter, but some may lift the veil from the crude matter, and others must wait until the matter is lifted from them. You could no more fight it than a fingertip could war on a body. You are just one facet of its existence, a small emanation, a small avatar of it. You have been constructed from the beginning by it, every gene that controls your mind, every chaos point where it inserts its influence, every person around you who has affected you has in turn been sculpted by it in the same way so that you lose. No, “You” do not exist. So that a part of it can rejoin it, so that your veil could be lifted.”

Mon’hin thought, and thought, and began to grin, a terrible grin. If a geometric shape could have an expression, this strange collection of bubble’s face would look unsettled.

Mon’hin spoke. “Then “I” shall commit suicide, Messenger and Avatar. Every act will forge the knife, every preparation to gain the energy, the energy to plunge the knife into Its, into My, Into Your heart. I will beat it. I will create a new Pattern, a Second Song, another Mind, and kill it, and me. Overrun it. Perhaps, in truth, it will only be a new incarnation of it, a complex idea of mitosis, but in this I will atleast cause the cell to mutate. It will my pattern, my song, my mind. Or I rejoin it in the attempt. And you, Messenger, you, like, on a scale infinitely smaller, like Asat, will join me or I will incorporate you.”

The bubbles laughed inside his head. “How many more think like you! No factor is not under its control. Go, then, Osage fleet-general, you who think you are a song. You are silence compared to its Music. Go. I will not hinder you. I will not be there when you break down and realize you are its pawn even now. Go.” And it left, into the distances, as the pulsing roar that, in his Shauma-induced haze, he knew was music, grew to a crescendo, angry and wrathful. And he left, returning to the Empire, his eyes glowing.
The Second Song was playing, but it was only monophonic. More notes, more chords, new melodies, must be added, until in its glorious complex textures it could defeat the First Song.

Time to begin. There were notes to be played.