[centre][h1]Calming Down[/h1][/centre]
[hr]
The bull knew not for how long he had flown (again, time was in flux). He had simply sought to get as far away from the wicked, taunting laughter of his sworn enemy. Remains of cosmic gas oozing from the ethereal manure on his hooves left an icy blue trail behind him, like an odious comet streaking across the fetal cosmos. Had he not been fuming with anger and shame, he might have heard a raging ape somewhere over the golden lake cuss out a little flea. The bull paid it no mind, for he had no mind to pay with. His head flowed over with unsavoury plans for how he would integrate the smug face of that heroic fart into the cosmic soil. His head was so full, in fact, that he didn’t notice the giant monkey’s kidney stone flying across the cosmic horizon. By the time the bull’s eyes escaped his navel, he was an arm’s length from the barren surface. 

A moment later, the bull came back to his senses. His velocity and carelessness had sent him straight through the outer surface of the planet into a set of porous caverns right underneath, formed from rapidly cooling magma exposed to the freezing outer atmosphere. He eyed the darkness surrounding him; it was doubtful that the cave network stretched far. His disturbance of the geology had created a localised anomaly, nothing more. He looked up - a small blink indicated that the surface was some distance above, but not unreachable. The bull paid little mind to questions regarding whether he had made a crater or caused irreparable damage to the planet; the immediate shock of the crash was gradually replaced by his previous anger. Why had he crashed here? Why had the planet been in the way? He just wanted to sulk, damn it!

In his fury, he ripped a stalagmite out of the ground and swung it around, breaking the walls around him and releasing more magma, which would rapidly cool, only to be broken again. Channels were dug deeper in some directions; in others, the ground caved in. Water from above poured down in sections, creating aquifers and underground rivers. Magma and water collided to create great clouds of steam which condensed on the cave ceiling and left a dank atmosphere. Some water dripped down on the ground and left the whole network eerily moist. 

Eventually, the god tired of his tantrum. Over the span of his rampage, he had dug kilometres of underground channels, some which had spawned cracks up to the surface where the occasional blink of light from the lake of gold winked at the deep. Underground lakes had formed, and the barren darkness had acquired an oozing dampness that choked the nostrils. The bull huffed and looked around. So much destruction wrecked on the Chthony of Galbar. Yet he was not sated. Oh no, he was far from sated - he could wreck a thousand channels more. Maybe the surface deserved a good dig? With a thirst for tilling, the bull climbed out of the hole he had made upon his crash into the planet and, using his horns as shovels, began tilling the dead, barren earth, nostrils fuming like the bellows of a forge. 

Yet the bull’s rampage had left another mark, one that he had not picked up on his stampede. The primordial filth that caked the bull’s disgusting hooves had brought with it some unexpected passengers: A little spore, a remainder of a simple life form that had lived off of nebulean cow pies back in the bull’s own realm, had traveled along on the minotaur’s hoof. In the rampage of the monster, some tracks had left spores all throughout the caverns. Most spores were instantly destroyed; either by the freezing cold, the barren soil or by the grueling heat of the sunpool. Yet one small patch persisted, one hardly larger than a biscuit. It had found an almost right microcosm in the underground caves: the moisture was adequate, the temperature was survivable, the shadows sheltered it from the gruesome radiation of space. 

Still, one crucial item was missing: sustenance. The soil was almost entirely inedible, and despite the fungi’s best efforts, once it had consumed the filth in the hoofprint on which it had hiked, there was nothing else there. A part of the colony sought to expand outwards in search of food, and some mucus tendrils were lucky and found more filth; however, it was consumed quickly, and the mucus could hardly reach the distance the bull had taken in a single step. With no more food in reach, almost the entirety of the fungus went into a catatonic state of near-death, a last-ditch effort to save nutrients in a desperate plea for a future of plenty. In virtually any other timeline, this would have meant the end for this fungus as well; like the other traces left behind by the bull, this one too, would have died.

Yet a fraction, a small network within the network of the mycelium mucus, had absorbed the greatest share of nutrients from the bull’s filth. As such, it had concentrated most of the strength and power… Divine power. With it, the groggy, near-dormant fungus concentrated what power it had left in a craving search for something - anything - to help it stay alive. In an instant, using the droplet of the droplet of infinite potential trapped within the divine essence it had absorbed, the fungus broke through the barrier between the Material and the Astral. It was no star - it was not even a flicker of burnt gas; what it was, though, was enough. For the briefest, infinitesimally short blink of time, the fungus transcended into the Immaterial. It understood not what had happened, for even without its complete and utter catatonicism from starvation, it would not have had the senses nor the consciousness to describe what had just transpired. As such, with the last of its power spent, the fungus descended into a weak, doomed slumber.

… And yet, it had happened. A flicker of divine energy had permitted Galbar’s first mortal life to break the barrier between the planes. The fungus was not dead; it could very well be within an hour, but for now, it lived. The Astral Plane had felt its hunger, even for the briefest of moments, and a link had been established. The fungus, for the rest of its existence, would be irrevocably tied with the realm of the stars. Should it survive until sustenance arrives, perhaps the link could be nourished and, with time, even expand into a channel? But for now, it slept, trapped in limbo between the newly material concepts of the living and the dead.

Elsewhere, the Great Till had begun.

[hider=SummaREEEE!]
Hummus flies through space and is angy. He crashes into Galbar, which makes him moar angy. He crashed through the surface and into the underground, and goes on a rampage through a section of the planet’s crust, digging channels and causing cave-ins, which create aquifers and underground lakes. He then gets tired and climbs back up to take his rage out on the surface instead.

However, unbeknownst to him, the shit on his hooves left some prints, and on some of those prints, a tiny fungus clings to life. Almost all of it dies immediately, but a tiny disk no larger than a biscuit lands in a Goldilocks spot and manages to eat enough hoofshit for it to fill up on divine essence. With this essence, it spends the last of its nutrients establishing a very weak channel to the Astral Realm. The fungus then enters a deep, near-death hibernation state, but the link persists as a miniature blip on the Astral radar.
[/hider]