"Die spawn of the deep!!"
"There are too many of them!"
"Retreat!!"
"Fall back to the citadel!"
From above, Scourge passively observed the slaughter as his children tore through the submerged village and its aquatic inhabitants. Down near the sea floor, the water had turned murky with blood and kicked up silt from the frantic struggle for survival. However, the struggle was drawing to a close as calls for retreat vibrated through the depths, sending the few hundred that remained fleeing toward an old ruin at the very center of the village. The sunken building had stood the test of time, with its marble columns, frieze, metopes, and pediment holding strong despite being covered in large corals and clusters of barnacles.
Normally, Scourge wouldn't care for such a monument, but the building's architecture was yet another piece of evidence leading Scourge towards a rather interesting possibility. But his hypothesis could wait; there was much that needed to be addressed in the moment.
Descending through the water, Scourge levitated rather than swim and quickly arrived on the sea floor, 'Elektra, to me.'
Scourge sent out the telepathic command, and an instant later, a red streak cut through the water before coming to a stop before him as Elektra knelt on the sea floor, 'The last of the natives have sealed themselves inside the ruins, my lord. I would wager that roughly three hundred escaped our ambush, though their walls will not hold for long.'
The former human assassin was now almost unrecognizable, her skin replaced by dark red and black scales, her neck adorned with frilled slits that writhed hypnotically, and her massive eyes capable of capturing the little light that managed to trickle down from above. In her current form, Elektra almost resembled a merfolk, though the ghostly white barbed tentacles extending down her back like a cape ruined the comparison.
Scourge gazed at the ruins and peered through the marble walls with his biovision, staring at the clusters of golden energy waiting to be harvested. 'Ensure that some of the natives survive. They will be valuable subjects for experimentation, and their memories should provide some valuable insight into their civilization.'
'Yes, my lord,' Elektra hastily responded, but before she could leave to carry out Scourge's orders, the god raised his hand, making her pause. 'Have the drones begin collecting biomass. A broodmother is minutes away.'
'Are we creating another hive, my lord?' Elektra asked her saucer eyes brimming with a primal joy.
'I believe that the natives will provide the necessary influx of biomass; it would be a waste to leave it unutilized.' Scourge replied matter-of-factly, 'I also wish to spawn a new strand. There are adaptations to be made, and the native genetics will prove most useful for assimilation. I will begin clearing an area to establish the nest and begin converting this land into a more suitable biome.'
'As you decree,' Elektra replied with her head bowed before she took off once more, rushing to carry out her lord's orders.
Moving through the underwater village, Scourge observed the coral-encrusted caves that seemed to be used as housing, and when he took a closer look, he found a strange plaster-like material at the base between the corals and the basalt caves, 'How fascinating, they use coral as a building material, grafting on pieces and chiseling away excess to form the desired shape...such as process must take decades. I wonder how many generations have grown up and expired within these caves'
It may have seemed strange that Scourge was fascinated by the history of a people that he actively sought to eradicate, but as the Swarm evolved, so did the god's mindset.
Eventually, if the universe were truly finite, the Swarm would consume all, extinguishing countless races and civilizations formed over the course of billions of years.
The thought of all that information, history, and knowledge being lost was unacceptable. Scourge's inquiry expanded beyond the building blocks of life, or it was more accurate to say that his definition of life broadened.
'Humanity rose from homo sapiens that evolved nearly three hundred thousand years ago, and has become essentially stagnant from a genetic viewpoint. But their culture...it rivals any evolutionary accomplishment since a single cell assimilated the mitochondria into its biology, providing the basis for all multicellular life on this planet. A process that took billions of years to occur.
In comparison, Plato wrote about the great island city of Atlantis sinking in 9600 bc, meaning roughly eleven thousand years have elapsed. That is nowhere near enough time for such a drastic evolutionary change. The people of Atlantis should have been wiped out in the face of such calamity; nevertheless have survived and evolved into an entirely new species in less than a million years.'
Coming to a stop, Scourge found himself at a nexus of the narrow underwater caverns that made up the village, 'I guess every occurrence comes down to a series of infinitely improbable probabilities, so what improbabilities allowed them to flourish...another secret of life that I must dissect and master, so the Swarm may flourish.'
Bringing his hands together in front of his chest as if he were praying, Scourge connected his consciousness to the hive mind, tapping into the endless collective of mental energy.
Liquid shadow engulfed Scourge's clawed hands, which he pulled apart to reveal a small pitch black sphere slowly rotating between them.
Staring at the orb, Scourge could sense more than the psionic energy within, a spark of potential far greater than the current power he wielded. The spark felt both alien and an extension of himself, 'True divinity...it still eludes me.'
His counterpart had reported sensing the spark as well, perhaps even more strongly due to his followers actively working to spread his influence.
But the power wasn't theirs to use freely. Genesis explained that the more of this spark he imbued, the more restrictions were placed on his actions.
'It seems that a god can not act beyond their domain, and the more they use their spark, the clearer the boundaries of their domain become. While the more aligned a god's action with their domain is, the greater their influence.' Scourge mused as he stared at the sphere in his hands before gently letting it go.
The shadow dropped like a stone plummeting to the sea floor, but even the solid bedrock wasn't enough to slow the shadow's descent. In a matter of seconds, the sphere vanished within the earth, leaving only a single hole as proof of its passing.
Tracking the orb's descent, Scourge waited an entire minute before he slowly brought his hands together. The moment his palms touched, a muffled boom echoed through the water as the seafloor around Scourge fractured and cracked.
The tremor seemed unending and only intensified as the floor collapsed, revealing that a massive cylindrical cavern had formed beneath the earth. Floating in the very center of the opening, Scourge looked down into the abyss and dipped his head in a singular nod of approval, 'This shall do.'
As Scourge lowered his hands, a powerful psionic presence reached out to him, searching and longing for a place to rest. It would be the first and last time she would make such a journey; the rest of her life would be in service of her brood.
A few minutes later, a massive form emerged from the dark depths, slowly descending with a haunting grace as the being relied on its mastery of psionics to move rather than mechanical energy.
Pale ghostly flesh covered her body, nearly translucent and so delicate it looked as if it would bruise with the slightest touch. From the waist to her neck, the brood mother resembled a human woman with a slender figure that perhaps would have been attractive had it not been attached to the rest of her body.
From the waist down, a writhing sea of squid-like tentacles drifted through the water, each ribbed with bone-like growths. And instead of arms, three harpoon-like appendages replaced her limbs with razor-sharp serrated blades on the end.
However, the most captivating aspect of her appearance was the massive frilled mantle that rose up from behind her head, and covered the majority of her face, leaving only two slitted nostrils and a lipless mouth filled with needle-like teeth visible. From end to end, the Broodmother was nearly twenty feet long, though her size was more of a vulnerability than a benefit.
Which was why she was being escorted by a small army of drones, ready to throw their lives at any threat to protect the Broodmother.
Though no threat arose and the Broodmother descended into the cavern unmolested, disappearing once more as she made her way to the very bottom of the chasm, where she would begin the process of converting a majority of her body mass into the beginning of a nest, including a spawning pool and a hactery.
Following behind the broodmother, Scourge began his descent as well, eager to experiment.