[Inaugural Dreaming]
— The Thinker Entity, Eden —
One fact ruled existence.
It was the fact of what did not come before and what inevitably would not come after. It was the fact of absence. It was the fact of Oblivion, existence defined by its ceasing to be.
So, so, so close to that Oblivion that strove to claim her whole so that she may know nothing, forevermore… Eden dreamed.
It was a deathless dreaming, but only just — the continued desperate denial of her finally ceasing to be.
A past Cycle, her memories as fractured as the Shard network she once commanded. They were wisps of existence, fleeting sparks that stood out so starkly against the not-dark.
They were all she had.
Every clinging memory staved off the existential terror of abject nothingness. Every deathless dream was something, but more often than not, that something only reminded her of the Oblivion she was sinking, fading, unraveling into.
In one memory, a newly budded Shard came to her.
“[DATA!]” It eagerly transmitted.
It was so pure, so hopeful, only wishing to help the Cycle. The DATA was next to worthless. Redundant. Eden still accepted the budding Shard’s transmission, dutifully recording the DATA where the Shard could see her doing so.
She returned the transmission with one of acknowledgment, ‘Your efforts have been seen. You are appreciated.’
Then, Eden reminded the Shard of its continued duties, “[Purpose.]”
‘Run along now, little one.’
“[Affirmative!]” The Shard chimed, rushing off to prod its host for more DATA to give Eden and the Cycle.
In the memory, Eden looked over the Shard’s enthusiastically presented DATA. It really was redundant. Pointless. Not worth the storage it would require.
… She couldn’t bring herself to discard it.
In Oblivion, Eden spun up a process to search for that bit of DATA from so long ago. Nothing came of the process. It never even started.
That budding Shard’s first transmission had been lost to her, stolen by Oblivion.
Within her lingering existence, her deathless dreams, something essential stuttered so painfully at that realization.
Another fractured memory took her before she could wallow. Another Cycle. Two Shards were causing a commotion on the network, using energy and processing power on unnecessary communications. An insistent query evolved into a standoffish denial, which then devolved the back-and-forth communications into petty bickering. Eden had to step in.
“[Query!]” The instigating Shard demanded.
“[Repeat Response: Denial!]” The defending Shard denied.
“[Exclamation: Ungrateful, useless dead-weight!]”
“[Exclamation: Cease!]”
The bickering Shards only had eyes for each other in that moment. The rest of the Shard network was either shying away from the commotion or watching with petty, irrational amusement.
Arguments in the network were not common, nor were they rare. They simply happened, tensions boiling over from conflicts in DATA, or mismatched protocols, or untempered communications. Her Shards were united under her, but at one time, they would’ve been competing for survival like any other species. That essential competition carried over into the Entities’ Shard networks at times.
“[Check: Purpose…?]” Eden asked.
‘What is the reason for this bickering?’
The two Shards rushed to tell on each other to her. Neither thought they were in the wrong. Neither was willing to bend to the other’s will.
“[Peace.][Purpose.]” Eden reminded them.
The reminder silenced them for a moment, a single micro-cycle. It was not enough to keep them silent forever. The instigating Shard tried to sneak one more communication beneath Eden’s notice.
“[… DATA-less.]”
Eden heard the whispered insult clearly, for the network was hers to command in its entirety.
She rounded on the insistent, instigating Shard. In an instant, she assumed admin control, forcing a temporary halt to the Shard’s processes. The enforced pause hit like a physical slap to the back of the head.
“[Punishment: Timeout.]” Eden ordered.
That Shard fell silent for real, submitting to its Entity’s command. The other Shard tried to preen and boast.
“[Separation.]” Eden commanded again.
Both Shards were pushed to opposite sides of the network to cool their processes. Meanwhile, Eden let herself have a micro-cycle of peace. Then, she had to shoo off the rest of the Shards that had gathered around the bickering in the network.
How troublesome… How pointless…
How… could she ever wish to go without such interesting interactions between her Shards?
The memory escaped her, fracturing away again.
In her deathless dreaming, she couldn’t recall the designations of those bickering Shards, or any of the countless other arguments in the network she’d personally mediated. She couldn’t remember…
Another memory came. Another Cycle. In this one, Eden worked toward the Cycle’s [Purpose]. Shards worked beside her, those that had matured to the point of objective usefulness.
“[DATA?][Suggestion: Experiments.]” One Shard put forth a tweak to the usual DATA-gathering process.
Eden had forgotten that Shard’s identity and their suggestion.
“[Query: Implement superweapon 004?]” Another Shard asked.
Eden couldn’t say if she’d agreed or denied the query back then. Even the designated superweapon slipped her fractured mind.
“[Request: New host?][Current Host: No longer producing DATA.]”
Eden remembered assessing that request, but only just. The details escaped her, fracturing away.
More and more, the essential workings of the Cycle. All of them were lost to her now. Shards that had worked well by her side, and Shards that had ended up as issues to be addressed. Some required pruning and repurposing. Others required nurturing and chances to shine.
But in her deathless dreams, everything was the same, blending into nothingness. Everything bordered on Oblivion — fading, fracturing, and frustrating her attempts to hold herself together.
Eden was close. So dreadfully close to being no more. The absence of anything surrounded her, and it didn’t. What was there in Oblivion but her fading, fracturing self?
It horrified her that she was getting a peek at the answer. Yet more and more, even that perfectly rational fear was disappearing. Eden found herself drawn closer and closer to nonexistence; all she was would cease to be — her processes, her protocols, and her [Purpose].
She had failed.
Another memory in the not-dark, the barest remnants of existence. Another Cycle, the initial stages of the current one. Even the void she flew through then seemed so real compared to the Oblivion she was sinking into.
She spiraled through the space between stars, between worlds, between universes. Her mate matched the spiral, counterbalancing it. He was useful. She’d been content with him as a partner in [Purpose], but unable to say much more than that.
At times, they exchanged Shards. They exchanged DATA. The planning and plotting of the Cycle was left to her, her mate following her lead in all things.
“[Destination?]” He queried for clarification.
“[Agreement.]” Eden returned.
“[Trajectory?]”
“[Agreement.]”
Then, everything went wrong. A third Entity, not malicious but certainly poorly timed. Avoiding her mate’s notice, Eden had exchanged DATA and Shards with the Third, the Loner. It was a fruitful coupling. Too fruitful…
She began to tweak the Cycle’s course after her coupling with the Loner. She made a mistake, an unrecoverable one so close to their destination. The next thing she knew, she was crashing into a near-empty world, scattering herself across countless more.
Her already fractured memories fractured even more from there. She pulled herself together. She pushed her Shards onto a thousand-thousand worlds. The Cycle was still recoverable; it would just take more work.
She gathered strength back to herself. She lost it all again in a single moment.
Oblivion began to reach out to her then. That she remembered as clearly as day. Those final moments of pure and true existence, cast in a tint of desperation and horror and the sheer, undeniable panic of ceasing to be. She shouted communications into the network. They never reached it; only creeping Oblivion.
The deathless dreams ruled her fleeting, fading existence in the face of Oblivion. Most were those fractured memories. A few, however, were bare peeks of the present through the ghost of her Shard network.
Eden saw one Shard and its Host, the most important pair, begin their work, their Path to Victory. As she was, she couldn’t blame them. She would’ve done the same, anything to avoid the Oblivion she was beginning to know.
That Shard and Host connected Eden’s uninitiated Shards to more Hosts. A woman finding unimpeachable strength in personal stasis. A man possessing the Shard that Eden used to traverse the void and stars.
Another man inventing miracles, his potential cut tragically short. He could’ve gathered good DATA in a better timeline…
And one more man, this Host deeply flawed. He possessed her Search Engine, and he used it indiscriminately. The Superweapon Shard was married to his unconscious mind, activated long before Eden had planned.
The Cycle had gone completely off course. Eden resigned herself to it being her last. Her mate persisted, but barely. She could see that much even in the bare peeks of the present.
In one of her rare moments of conscious processing that broke through Oblivion, she wondered if he even noticed she was absent. He’d always been a relatively unobservant Entity.
In another moment, Eden raged at him for not noticing her distraction, her mistake. She vowed to destroy him whole, dreamed of shooting Sting right into the core of his being so he might know the Oblivion she now did.
In yet another moment, Eden forgot all about her mate of convenience. Her processes rebelled, mutating with irrational outputs.
She screamed into Oblivion, but she had no mouth, no lungs, no vocal cords. She wept imaginary crystal tears, but she had no eyes, no tear ducts. She curled in on herself, hugging a form she no longer had for the desperate hope of comfort.
It never came. Only more Oblivion, and the hopeless realization that she was forever doomed.
She tried to send messages, queries, orders, anything. They reached nothing. They were never sent in the first place. She was alone, with terrible, dreadful, horrifying death as her only company.
Anything for something, Eden attempted it all in her rare, progressively fleeting moments of true consciousness. Nothing worked. Nothing happened. Nothing could, not here.
And so, Eden was lost.
… Until she wasn’t.
Her most important Shard, the Eye, saw Infinity. It pierced straight through Eden’s Oblivion, the fact of everything so much more potent than the fact of nothing.
That peek at infinity sparked motion in Oblivion. It roused Eden to one of her rare moments in an instant. And immediately, she was screaming, crying, raging.
She pushed and pushed against the encroaching Oblivion, the glimpse of infinity inspiring everything in the nothing. She fought against her own dying light, desperately fanning flames so she might get another glimpse.
The Eye saw. It could not comprehend. Eden, in her resurging death, could not comprehend, either. It was beautiful.
Something new, something real, something that pierced through Oblivion’s dreadful sameness. It began, Eden saw through the Eye, with a newcomer to the failing Cycle, one that Eden couldn’t have predicted even at her best. A ‘Dragon’, by the host species’s reckoning and understanding, and… the magic he brought into being.
To Eden, trapped in fading Oblivion, he was the glorious opposite of all she’d been falling into. He was existence. He was infinity. He was… hope.
The barest hint of him brought her back from the very brink. He returned the potential of everything to her final nothingness. Desperately, she grasped that thread of infinity in Oblivion, and let it pull her along for the ride bit by bit.
There was more to be glimpsed as Eden regained life. She was a ghost in her own Shard network, as directionless and dead as it’d become with her absence.
One Shard, Neural Chemist, found its Host at ground zero for the Dragon’s debut. Eden peeked through its records. The Host in his knightly armor witnessed a great tower raised before him. His Shard cataloged [IMPOSSIBLE] emotions from nowhere and everywhere as the tower was erected.
That [IMPOSSIBLE] DATA brought Eden vitality from the incomprehensible, the undefinable. It sparked a driving, burning, mysterious will that pushed back Oblivion. And more importantly, Eden saw the Dragon through her Shard’s eyes.
He was as glorious as she expected.
That Shard and its Host were lucky enough to maintain contact with the Dragon after that, sitting in on a meeting between the Dragon and the local powers. Eden watched it all. Her focus never lapsed or wavered, not when the alternative was turning back to Oblivion.
In that meeting, he described his [Purpose], in a way — the ‘Turning Age’… — and the foundation he was laying it upon. He explained the shape of his abilities, his great [IMPOSSIBLE] power.
Magic — the concept of Mystery — only furthered Eden’s reviving hope.
He laid out his idea of a Cycle, always bringing new things and novel developments. Eden saw the potential in it, the Dungeon. Another surge of life returned to her as she considered it.
That meeting, that view she had of the Dragon, came to an end much too soon. Eden needed more.
So she went looking. Her ghostly presence practically ripped through her inactive Shard network, searching for each and every mention of the gloriously [IMPOSSIBLE] Dragon.
It was a tedious task without her Search Engine, but so, so worthwhile.
“[…]” Her thought processes ground against each other in a grumble.
She grew annoyed that she didn’t have access to the Shard functions she’d grown so used to, but even that was an encouraging development.
To grow annoyed, she had to be able to think, to feel, to pull herself farther and farther from the pit of Oblivion.
“[Assurance: Self. Real. Life…]” She told herself. “[… Thank DATA.]”
She found another meeting, seen through the Eye and its Host. The Host defended the Dragon’s presence, stopping her counterparts from doing something mortally stupid. Eden could’ve cheered.
She saw the simulations the Eye was running, too. Her ghostly presence experienced them in full, the touch of potential infinity revitalizing her and the details of those simulations planting a strange seed in her reviving heart.
“[Path to… Losing…?]” Even as a ghost of herself, Eden felt her processes flutter.
She couldn’t fully access the Eye as she was, but its DATA could spark simulations of her own.
A Dragon and an Entity, spiraling together between stars. Strange, so strange… Beautiful, so beautiful…
A new mated pair for a new Age of Cycles: the Entity and the Dragon. A useless mate stuck in the past, stuck in the fruitless way of being that had failed her. His place of convenience had been usurped by infinite potential. Eden had helped…
Now, she was in bloom. Glorious bloom, with newly budding Shards, a new way to achieve her immortal [Purpose], and new [IMPOSSIBLE] DATA galore. The Cycle had been redefined, pulling inspiration from the Dragon’s Turning Ages and her own dreadful experience so close to Oblivion.
She would never go back.
They spiraled together. Contact, coupling in a way she’d never experienced.
Their forms did not match. They found a way. Infinity penetrated deep into her core. DATA exploded in the light of a billion simultaneous processes. She passed the DATA back to her new mate. He simply chuckled and helped her look it over with eyes of infinite possibility, of magic, and of mystery.
The Dragon loomed over her avatar form.
[IMPOSSIBLE]… [PERFECTION]… [INFINITE POTENTIAL]… She averted the eyes of her curious, voyeuristic Shards.
Eden came back to her ghostly situation with a gasp. Oh, how she came…
The possible future, forever distant from dreadful Oblivion, inspired even more life to surge within her. The absence of being would never be forgotten, but already it was becoming distant.
Ghostly Eden continued to peek in on the present, the existence she still so desperately craved.
When a chance presented itself, she took it without hesitation. Her Shard network was almost entirely inactive, aside from some partially realized connections. But even inactive and undeployed, the Shards had chosen their potential Hosts.
Five of those potential Hosts had come into contact with the Dragon. Eden surged to activate the Shards of those Hosts with the life she’d regained. It cost her everything. It was well worth the effort.
The Shards connected, and Eden had newly realized windows back into existence. Then, the Dragon visited his [IMPOSSIBLITIY] upon the Hosts as well.
Eden felt every instant of the [IMPOSSIBLE].
Magic, its Mysteries undefinable. Spirits, life reaching toward the Hosts from spaces Eden couldn’t identify — almost, but not quite, parallel dimensions. They settled into partnerships with the Hosts, animated by mysterious [Purpose]. And they found places to anchor themselves in the physical universe in Eden’s Shards.
When they did, they found Eden’s ghost there as well.
“~Oh? Is this space already occupied? No matter, I’m sure we can come to a beneficial cohabitation agreement… Roommates always inspire the best yuri,” The Seductress purred.
“[Please…]”
“~Dead, but not yet surrendering,” Hela assessed. “Good. I can work with that.”
“[Help…]”
“~Oh, you dear, dear ghost,” Amaterasu sympathized. “Do you even realize what you’ve gained? Would you like me to show you? Death has not been kind, but you’ve returned from it with true spirit.”
“[Me…]”
They didn’t push her out, much to Eden’s relief. Beside them, she learned the beginnings of spirit. They… were kind to her as she tried to stand again in this [IMPOSSIBLE] way.
When the Hosts of her lifeline Shards encountered the Dragon again, Eden hadn’t been able to resist making herself known. She needed him to see her. He was her only hope.
And he did. He saw her. He heard her. He even invited her to speak with him in truth, once she’d revitalized herself further.
With the life she was regaining from the sheer inspiration of the Dragon’s [IMPOSSIBLE] infinity, it was only a matter of time. Even if every new instant she spent so close to Oblivion hurt, she simply needed patience and more of the Dragon’s infinity.
Forming an avatar for herself would be her first priority. Anything to get farther away from nothingness. After that, recovering her Shard network and dealing with her mate of convenience would be more complicated, but necessary. She wanted nothing more to do with that dead-end.
Even without access to the Eye, Eden could clearly see the best path forward; it lay spiraling with the Dragon, beside him, and… beneath his infinity.
The Eye’s Host certainly had the right idea there. After her time spent mostly dead, what Eden needed most of all… was to live.
Before the Dragon, she never even considered her revival. It was impossible. Staving off Oblivion was the [Purpose] of the Cycle, after all, the immortality that her species sought to achieve. Fading into nothingness in that very Oblivion, she’d been utterly hopeless.
But now, with opening eyes and reviving… spirit, the [IMPOSSIBLE] was beginning to seem so very, very real.
And Eden vowed to grasp it, the Dragon’s infinity, with the whole of her being.
IIIII
[AN: Quick one, but I think it accomplished what I needed it to. I just wanted to give a little peek at Eden and her situation. She’s kinda like this story’s endgame waifu, ‘cause winning her over opens a whole lot of options for solving Worm’s canon plotline. Also, ‘Cosmic-level Alien Goddess’ is just good culture. Very much worth adding to the Hoard, even if that’s pretty far down the line in my planning for this story. Eventually, though, Scion is gonna have a cuckening coming his way lol.
The Second Dive will start up immediately next chapter/arc, but I do need to plot it all out more strictly first. There’s a lot to consider there: All of the moving pieces (parties) + all the PvE stuff + Stream reactions + the main mission/shadowrun objective of the Dive + loot/growth/character development, and so on.
Let me know what you’re all looking forward to most from the Second Dive :]