02 Sparks

Ekyall was an amalgamation of stones, waters, and dust. With slow care and effort, and although small, he manipulated it and hung into orbit around a star. This tiny blue star he knew would burn for a long time. From his world he took the light and the mud from the water and formed them into small soft glowing creatures. They ate the dust and drank the water within the pools.

The pools glowed. It was beautiful, but not the end of his work, they still had no thoughts. So he remembered the stinging of the sand and the fear from when he emerged into this reality. He took his memories and his drawings and shaped a creature from them. These had a draw and hunger instilled to subsume the globules within the pools. This new creation had many countless limbs, fangs, and mouths. Settling among the pools, they felt, they desired, and they hungered. The waters flashed some bubbling red and some went dim. The waters that went dim, putrefied.

He did not want the pools to grow dark but was a kind of balance. He knew that he could cause an equilibrium that would maintain itself. But, without conflict, his universe would stagnate. Still, he could not let them all die out. He took some of the globules and allowed them to string together. These were set to consume the creatures that had fed and preyed upon them. They clung to the rocks and used their lights to lure the predators in. Now larger, they were enabled to devour the many-limbed creatures. Some of the adversarial creations had grown larger and did fell prey to this. These continued consuming the young of the glowing creatures. Pools of water swirled now, parts dark, parts sparking, flashing. A desire to live, a need to survive.

For some time he watched as each of his creations warred with the other. They grew, survived, hungered, but could not hate could not feel. They were not like those who were there from his first thoughts and they were not like him. He made more and added them to the balance. When a creature would die wasted flesh would sit. He formed smaller creations, each tasked with breaking down specific parts. Some bacteria formed colonies, their waste forming gasses and enzymes. Microbes pervaded every part of the world and its inhabitants. Not all were symbiotic. Some worked and existed in the organs in bodies of creatures. Other bacteria would bloom, causing an imbalance in their systems. Failing systems often caused major organs to cease functioning.

He created more. Small, simple things. They propelled themselves off flagellum or stretched out bodies for motility. They reproduced, flourished and filled the waters. Creation was further varied and more complex things were formed to hunt them. These had hard shells, long spindly legs, claws, or were fast with eyes and many teeth. These would die off and starve if there were too few prey for them to consume. He changed some of the bacteria to feed off the light and turn to algae and plants.

The ecosystem grew and changed, but the balance remained perfect. There would be stagnation within this perfection. So he created something that wasn't alive and hid them among the algae. It would attach itself to each creature and take samples of its pattern. It would take those samples and drop bits within other organisms. Changes came, but they came slowly. Some sickened and died, others gained minor mutations. With each generation of the virus, his creations became more complex. Each change different than the last. His creatures were different from him but beautiful. They were joys and terrors. But they had no thought beyond survival.

* * *

Simple brains of the first two grew more complex. Both remained adversarial, but one could not outpace the other. The glowing creatures developed complex life cycles. Starting with a single cell bonding with others until a polyp formed and clung to the rocks. There they would lure and grasp out at anything that grew near. Once large enough simple brains formed within the colonies. When the time came for reproduction tendrils matured, detaching to hunt. The second creation would consume many of the tendrils in the process. Still, others would embed themselves within them. Filamental nerves spread like a web throughout the predator's body. Nerves manipulated and compelled them to swim to the colonies.

The amorphous creatures had changed too. Black tentacled bodies would bloat with eggs. The would continue to expand until they reached a critical size. When the eggs approached the time to hatch they would lose their buoyancy and sink to the bottom of the seas. There the body would calcify for the young would burrow out of. Now as a larval form they would exist and grow under a layer of silt. They gorged on microorganisms and plankton waiting. Approaching maturity the young would find colonies of the glowing polyps. Larvae molted their skin revealing their chrysalis beneath them. When they finally emerged it would be into their adult forms. Large and hungry they would destroy the polyp's structures from beneath. It was a balanced cycle of predation. Still, it was too balanced.

Some microorganisms adapted fibers into mycelium and began spreading outside of the seas. Young of the second creation followed in their larval form after the nutrients. They were drawn up onto the land. Now though their essential prey was absent. This and the myriad of viruses disrupted their reproductive cycle, changing them further. Those immature laid their eggs on the surface. What spawned were half-formed, blind black predatory worms. These were the first creatures of the earth. Over time spores adapted to seed and animals adapting to the land became more complex. Still, no thinking creature emerged.

* * *

Over time the adversarial creatures he'd created went through drastic changes. The black annelids grew hard carapaces and a fanged mouth. Tendrils grew at random between gaps in their plated shells. They sought after all creatures, eating, devouring, and spawning. They were an infestation wherever they went.

The light affixing anemone stayed near the shore. lapping up water and forming barriers between the land and seas. As the colony's segments matured they would drop off the mother colony. Matured segments landing in the sea would drift and settle. Once settled they would grow until they formed a colony their own. Those that landed on land and the shallows would molt until 4 spindly legs and a hard carapace formed. Their 2 segmented body pulsed signaling others warning of danger and food. For food, these used their claws. They dug into the ground to send out small pulses of energy sensing anything living. These sentinels protected the colonies from infestation.

Colonies formed and grew into massive spires of light. They communicated in bright colors and flashes. Information about storms, diseases, and local wildlife constantly accumulated. Knowledge was a shared collective and the sentinels protected them. Plant and animal life flourished around them as sentinels of protection.

In territories where infestations began life ceased. Wildlife and fauna were consumed en-masse. Plants rotted as the fungus bound to their roots, siphoning life from them. Worms ate into ever into the base of the spires until they toppled. Only at the point in which their predation could not be supported did mass die-off occur. This limit was only reached with the absence of all other life.

Sentinels developed follicles at each joint. Each follicle allowed them to detect the mycelium as a precursor to the infestation. When detected communicative flashes would coordinate between the stone towers allowing for containment. Despite defensive measures, larvae still contaminated the sentinel drones with small, sticky, egg-sacks. These clear protective sacks hid and lay dormant. Dormancy was random, at times for minutes, at times countless orbits. Once it ended they would spawn and the cycle would continue.

Between the two, Sentinels took the coast guarding the mainland and islands. The annelids followed the greatest mycelium concentration to the frozen north. The fungi flourished here warming the atmosphere and blackening the earth.

* * *

He watched and listened and waited for civilization. Some time had passed and though the intricacies of life had grown in depth there was still no meaning to it all. Only a base desire to survive. He watched and grew impatient. His impatience compelled him to act. Small, simple and carelessly inspired. A seed was planted. A simple plant, it grew fast a single stalk with leaves larger as they spiraled up.

For this creation, he formed something new. A word, a name. They were Spiricoso. For some it would be poison, others hope. Flowers would mature on the spiricoso beneath its leaves. They would release a sweet pungent scent after dropping its seeds. Yes simple but, in its oils, it could bond to the neuroreceptors of many of the creatures. He'd carefully crafted the chemicals. So when these impressions bonded to the minds of the creatures they would receive bits of him. They were fragments of the memories he had once been destined to have. It had strings of the worlds to come, and those that would pass, it had lies and truth, and insanity.

Seeds caught in furs, washed away in the rains, they were so small that they blew across the winds. Propagation was short and soon encompassed the world. The spiricoso culled countless species not suited to its chemical traits. For them, its poison and lure were too great and they died within the first orbit of the planet. Others died over the decades. They ate nothing but the nutrient-void leaves, withering and wilting away. Still, some learned to ignore it as a useless part of the biome. Being predators, the Infestation ignored it and the Sentinels simply recorded its existence. They were meant to, they would maintain the balance of this world for him, but could not be civilization.

* * *

A variety of bugs were the first to achieve the change he wanted. It was a stinging bug with many eyes and 12 legs with complex claws at the end. They at first killed off and ate those that became erratically aggressive. Then there were those who either consumed less or received diminished dosing. Instead of lies and insanity, these bugs gained knowledge. At first, nests became more structured. Hives used more complex chirps to coordinate their swarming. Then they began noticing the patterns of the spires. They learned and used the spires. Spires eased navigation, taught them weather patterns and signs of an infestation. Their survivability improved.

Their females became the largest of the Dauver. With the size room for a brain allowed them a majority of the intelligence for each hive. Over time they structured changes within the structures of the hives. The resulting changes in structures resulted in an auditory parallel of the spires. Hives would now resonate with sound, communicating instruction for the swarms.

Each queen sought expansion of her hive. So the hives warred for dominance over resources. Wars continued until all but one queen became eliminated. This unified them and gave them an identity, they knew themselves as the Dauvers or the hive.

Their mega hive grew to encompass millions of the drones in the swarm. Each drone was within a specialized caste. Harvesters harvested plant matter. They maintained livestock and fed the young. Defenders guarded the queen's spiraled spiricoso plants and hive entrances. Architects built researched and advanced the mega-hives and sub-hives. Hunters defended the hive and were used to gather livestock from the wild. Signallers acted as relays for the queen and watched the spires for warning.

* * *

The second beings to begin to dream did not come until the Dauvers had long been established. Signallers observed their short history from the spires. The Dauver knew them and categorized them. To the bugs, they were Kesits Domi or domesticable hunting animals. The Dauver watched them. They knew how kesit hunted. The bugs saw how they could run and exhaust Enkyall's herbivores. The saw nimble hands climb trees for fruit and nuts.

They were small in comparison to the prospective owners being only a fifth the size. They were humanoids covered in short thick teal fur. Lean bodies stood on long knobby legs. Their long toes provided better gripping while climbing and balance while running. Their two arms were as long as their legs. At the end of each were three dexterous fingers and two symmetric thumbs.

Their behaviors and migratory patterns were observed and confirmed in the spires. Watchers sent their hunters to collect enough of a sample to maintain diversity. There were no losses in the synchronized effort in subjugating the species. In the beginning, older specimens were difficult to work with. They were stupid and prone to attempt fleeing or fighting. It took constant manipulation of various variables to achieve desirable traits. The most efficient method of domestication was to consume the older Kesit Domi in front of the young. It was effective and instilled the dominance prevalent among the vertebrated land species.

After 4 generations of selective breeding, Kesit became near perfect docile livestock. The furry livestock took up minimal resources to maintain. They were of enough intelligence to manage the shroomeries, orchards. When no longer useful for agriculture they were sufficient sources of protein. Undesirable parts and bones were perfect fertilizer for the sacred plants.

It was vital to maintain the diversity of their livestock. Different cultivars needed separation into sub-hives. Dauvers found the balanced gender ratio strange. To maintain control females were kept separate from males. Genders only met at times to facilitate reproduction. Preventing anomalous behavior improved her hive's viability. The Queen ordered that only the specialized Dauver maintain the Spiricosa plant.

The denigration and enslavement of a species was something anticipated. Still, Kesits were humanoids like him. He created and manipulated this reality, so he would change one more thing.