Something stirs here, beneath the limpid waters of a primordial lake. Its stirring is sudden and violent, in stark contrast with the placid surface. Its depths are one of the first sources of life on primal Q'ab and the events which transpired were to set the scene for millennia of evolutionary change.

The placidity is disturbed by something alien and nameless. It reeks of brackishness; of decay. In its wake all is consumed. Its presence is keenly felt, eukaryotes fleeing from the churning waters; their escape is futile. Something stirs here, and now it emerges.

A roiling mass of microbes erupt forth from the surface. It rises to its full height in the lake and its splash echoes within the silence of a barren landscape.  Its shape flows, a viscous nightmare of liquid flesh washing over the embankment and spreading outwards from the now fetid pool. A patina of putrefaction is left behind it as it moves forward in violent lunges, seeking fodder for its corruption. Its hunger, no... my hunger knew no bounds. 

An intricate latticework of light emblazoned itself across his consciousness as he faltered from the waves of information that crashed against his mind. Xo'pil could not begin to fathom the intricacies of the attempts being made to communicate with him; all he knew was that it felt like his psyche was fraying as he struggled to differentiate himself from the alien presence he felt within. 

He... It continued to undulate across the terrain, single-minded in focus when an explosion erupted forth from the heavens, stellar detritus streaking across the sky before bombarding the planet. Its slick flesh, awash in an unguent ooze, shone bright when the form of a massive ship suddenly breached Q'ab's atmosphere. More explosions closely followed suit, and for the first time a new sensation bubbled to the surface of its mind. Fear. 

"What... what is this? What am I seeing?"
"Tzin..." The voice bubbled forth, the speed of the sound distorted so that its pitch slowed and changed. 
"Epi! Where are you? Where are we?"
"Tzin, is that you?"

Tentative feelers brushed at the fringes of his delirium. And for a moment, he was no longer there. He was elsewhere, returned to the ruins he had been exploring. He passively observed himself as his body rushed through sunken chambers and blocked passageways. He watched as he sent the form of a snapping beast thrashing with a vibratory blast from a wand. It flailed helplessly as it fought to upright itself. His hand reached out to push back an ancient barrier when something like a dark and polished stone crashed into his mind, shattering the image with ripples like the disturbed waters of a wading pool. The shadows of the room began to spiral and he clutched desperately at his train of thought. A black thread in an even blacker landscape.

The cold shock of mental immersion leaves me drowning in its alien intelligence and bottomless memories. Its thoughts, a diatribe scrawled in light, slams into my mind and sends me reeling before its terrible force. I sank beneath infinite fathoms of rapidly distorting fractals of energy.

It was here that he felt it. It had changed. It pulsed with a timeless, geologic rhythm. Eons had passed and he once more found himself on Q'ab. The presence he strove so hard to define had evolved, becoming the supreme architect of all life that arose. No longer was the planet a barren hellscape; lush vegetation blanketed the entirety of each continent. To it, all life seemed like threadlights of argent splendor; clusters of swirling orbs suspended in a vine-wrought cosmos. The sensation was mesmeric and overwhelming. The presence held no contradiction; only the pulse. Q'ab pulsed and shuddered with life and death; tide and magma.

Xo watched as it dug savage furrows deep within the planet's mantle, enriching the elements that would one day become shalam. He watched as it spiraled down to the ocean floor, catalyzing tectonic shifts that caused volcanic peaks to surge forth from the churning sea. And from one of these freshly birthed peaks was belched a beam of radiance that dissipated in the upper atmosphere. He strained as he attempted to decipher a narrative from the flood of information when once more his surroundings melted away. 

"Tzin, our neural interface is degrading at an alarming rate. Energy levels are nearing critical." 

I feel the prison of corporeality once more, essence tethered to being. My hands, not beneath my control, reach into my satchel and remove three discs which are immediately thrown and explode upon impact. Then, in a blinding instant, the solid earth is tugged from beneath my feet and something monstrous, without hands, lifts me up and shuffles me like a deck of cards. And I am gone. 

The physical world unfolds into a shape beyond mathematics. I try to close my eyes, but I have none. I was a signal flickering through a vast network exchange of roots and tendrils. A golden orb, recoiling between bumpers of pulsing crimson. I become lost in a gallery of oppressive and uneasy forms my mind is too flat to grasp. 

I begin to flex my muscles and the mountains ripples like water. Fledgling cities fall to my stirring. I bunch my fists and the soil convulses. My offspring that I had spent countless millennia guiding sought refuge from the madness. I shrug my vast and buried shoulders and the seas are upturned. The skies crack with streaks of lightning as torrential rains pour down upon me. I lift my head to the heavens and scream, and from my mouth erupts an apocalyptic stream of energy that tears through the atmosphere and is sent to seed the heavens. Substance and space melt before me as I travel with the beam on its epic trek. I am humbled by the vacuum's awful assault of nothing and nowhere. 

Time buckled and I know not how long I journeyed before I found myself hurtling towards a gaseous giant. It was in the same apocalyptic throes long distant Q'ab had been in. Its atmosphere was obscured by billions of reflective particles that caught me in their splendor, before magnifying my essence and sending nanoscopic bits of it across the vast expanses of the universe. 

For a moment I understood just how very small my largest thoughts had been. And I knew terror.

I hear myself thinking, asking.... what is this? And in my mind, another answers.

"Doom."

Its voice tolls, deep and sad and alone. 

And I am awake.