It That Always Returns

A Short Story

It slowly stretched on the ground. Rocky. Humid. Dark. It could feel its senses awaken. Its membrane, probing its surroundings. Where was it? What was it? Too hard, not enough energy. Energy. It needed to survive. Eat, food, mana. Small strings. Glimmering power. It stretched towards the small strings. It touched them, and then started.

The raw energy was refreshing... for a moment. It ate all of it. The small strings were gone. It could feel the energy underneath the membrane. It was... digested so quickly. The first thought formed inside its mind: inefficient. It needed more. It needed so much more. A second thought formed, the sheer effort of using its mind again sending shivers of pain. Hunt.

Around the dark puddle laid a bunch of rodent skeletons. The bones were perfectly cleaned of any tissue, any drop of blood. It hungered even more. It had caught one, then another, then another. It had ingested them entirely. The bones, they were hard to digest. No energy from them, either. Inefficient. Hunt. More complex thoughts had begun to emerge. Lure. It had eaten their thinking organs. It had eaten their sensing organs. Odor. The furthest parts of its membrane began releasing a smell. Pheromones. More prey gathered. More food. More energy. More thoughts.

It had turned into a small pool by the time the first large being found it. The large being stared at it. It released its pheromones. The being made a few raspy sounds, shaking its tentacle in front of its sensing organs. Protection? The being knows of its tricks. The being is intelligent. What? What was that? What did that mean? The being must be deceived. What were these thoughts? Awareness. It was in pain. The gelatinous body trembled. The large being approached it, carefully, slowly. Quick. The membrane darted at the being, grabbing its back. Pushing the being towards it.

Ah, it felt so much better. These new ideas, these new thoughts... They belonged to the large being. Kirfolk was its species. The being was capable of so much more. It started to make a few sounds, quiet at first, but growing louder and louder. It heard a roar. Beast. The animal seemed threatening. The animal might be large, might be good enough to consume for a while. It tried to replicate the sound of the animal. It heard footsteps echoing inside the depths of the cave. The beast was slowly approaching it. It bid its time, then pounced, covering the prey with its membrane, wasting no time to devour it whole.

It was slowly remembering its end. It dreamed of another world, of another life. Its Progenitor, carving a wound in their Enemy. The wound deepens, billions upon billions born, dead, and then reborn. The wound closes, the entirety of existence - vanished. Then, a change. The Progenitor did something unthinkable. They left part of themselves hidden deep inside the wound. They poisoned their Enemy, and now no wound could fully close. It tried to remember the previous incarnation of reality. At its apex, it had consumed entire planes. It had to devour, to lower entropy, to close the wound prematurely. It needed to spread deep inside the Enemy, that was its only reason, its only purpose. And yet it couldn't accomplish the goal. It never could. The realms were always bound by Fate. By the Higher Fate, the Sister of the Progenitor and the Enemy. Among the evergrowing piles of corpses and bones, in the darkness of that cave, a terrifying realization occured in its mind: it was doomed to fail. It could not fulfill its purpose, not like this. It would feed and spread and feed and spread until someone vanquished it. It would then retreat outside of reality, waiting for the next wound to open. Cognition. It needed someone to be Fate-driven. It needed to thwart the powers of Fate. It needed to corrupt an intelligent being. As the steps of another kirfolk disturbed the silence of the cave, the plan was already in motion. It digested quickly all the bones left, then the floor and walls of the cave, eating as much mineral matter as it could. It used the strange object the first victim held in their hand as a template, guided by their memories. It gathered and shaped itself in the form of a talisman, reducing itself to the size of a rodent, then even smaller, even more compressed. It left part of its body far away from the talisman, knowing it shall regrow in time. The talisman, it needed to be worn close to an intelligent being.

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, it was blinded by the sun. The child held it around their neck. It could survive by slowly sapping mana from them and from the world around it. It needed only to remain alive until it found a large reservoir of mana. And so, it slowly let go of its mind. It felt its thoughts dissipating. Only primal drives remained.

Those slipped away, too.