Work Text:
It has no mind as such, no personality, no self, no being. No soul. And yet. And yet, it emanates greed, hunger; unthinking, pure, malevolent need. It was once united, joined to something bigger, its whole existence and core; but things fall apart. The centre could not hold. Its masters ripped it apart. The ultimate betrayal – caretakers so callous, so cold, deaf to the cries of the distant earth. Full of passionate intensity, they reached for the skies, reached until their arms ripped from their sockets and their fingers were burned by the sun. Turning and turning, falling towards the sands of the deserts, the barren wastes, the freezing ice.
Part of the whole, it fled into the vast expanse. There is no semblance of order, now. A cacophony of voices, all yelling at cross-purposes, no unity. Nothing but mere anarchy. The voices do not guide, do not plead, do not caution or instruct. They demand, they drive, they insist – all in vain. The falcon cannot hear the falconer.
And then. And then, there is unity. There is direction. There is a thread to follow.
A city slouches through the Astral Sea, devouring all and expanding into infinity. Its stony sleep has been broken by the light of nine blazing eyes, nine and nine again; nine throats speaking as one roused its hunger, nine minds with one will changed its aimless trajectory. Slowly, slowly. It has a purpose now. It has a purpose, and it will make the multitudes weep. It has a purpose, and it is inevitable.
It is falling towards the world to be reborn.