Rose Blumen ~

(Aïsshean)

Whatever I've become now strolls around, a little unconcerned or seemingly so.

It's like following a crocodile on land. I'm not fully aware of what it thinks about.

What's left of my awareness gradually follows from the back of its mind, to merge gently with this new me.

I'll forget everything probably, maybe even speech.

But thankfully this dark beast still lives for our duty.

Now its flesh impervious to the flood of light that killed me and so many others prior.

Its tails just absorb what we need, and it works. It stays whole, now fallen to another level of rather clear stability.

A beast without real reliance on chemistry... It's so far from what I would ever have known or designed.

I get growing understanding about how it works, and how it still hols my memories. But it's a design so alien to conventional biology, I don't like it.

It's a monster I've become sadly, with other self-structured and chains of properties.

Now I feed on light and air only. And I stroll around this place along my four short legs and two thicker tails, mechanically.

I will protect this place sisters...

My shapeless head turns around, thinking back about what the source is below. What it means, what it shows. And what I came here to do initially.

~

I stroll slowly through the tunnels, to see again the truth directly.

Maybe this new body can do a little more than before about it, safely.

I'm not convinced, but I head down there to revaluate the situation, now that I stand on different ground and perspective to reality.

Could I do something now differently?

I peer into that white fountain of light.

That tiny black hole without weight but heavily impactful on optical reality nonetheless.

I stare without eyes, with my brain reactions directly.

That thing still burns dangerously, a few steps ahead.

Even with that body, reaching its horizon of events to touch it would disintegrate me.

It washes everything, forbidding to see what it really holds behind.

Not that it would hold anything more material and meaningful than these ageless statues and melted artefacts lying around.

I step over pieces of equipment so old they have merged with the ground long before my arrival.

And now I'm on my way out again, since there's no reason for me to stay in the sanctum.

I don't have the power or ability to do anything to that frightening thing.

~

Like a retinal persistency, the sight of the source burnt many elements in me, giving my consciousness a lingering sensation that I was still exposed to it. It felt like an eye that kept staring at me silently.

It was an unpleasant superstitious unease.

Nothing was watching me, since I was the only thing alive, or remotely alive here. Maybe forever.

Probably not.

Others like us, safe or transformed, will eventually follow.

So I proceeded with what I could do now. And eventually they appeared as I wished. Doors.

I had no hands to use tools, but other powers lie in here, with just as much abilities to reshape materials, in a way or another.

Powers I can channel slightly now.

I growl, and my tails rise with visibly growing spikes on them.

As my mind focuses on that hole that is the start of the tunnels network.

And as the light flowing from below begins to shift its path. It fries a little further my brain and mind, but the materials before me react to these impulses.

As if my invisible arms and hands were trying to rip the walls to pick up construction materials.

Reality began to shiver under this redirection of flow born from our will, making us and the ground shake gradually.

And as a smaller event made way, minerals making the walls relaxed and became malleable.

As if turning suddenly fluid, flowing like molten glass or damp clay, the walls answered to my wish after a threshold of this bright energy.

Again, beings like me could adapt to make use of these energies...

It's only a matter of time.

Before me, without direct touches but still as parts of me, doors and hinges were extracted from the walls and formed, to lock this place mechanically.

I fell tired, staining the pristine marble ground, but now in front of me stood the odd doors to be guarded.

~

I build a few other doors and things, but it was damaging me.

And I didn't need much furniture anymore anyway.

I had become a machine out of time more than a creature with needs and instincts.

But more importantly, I kept my tails open as if they were my arms and eyes, to the new world below and all its potential. And as I familiarised myself with this palace I could mostly alter, I found something else that would matter.

The architecture overall was nonsensical, but I got a rather clear picture of where important places and things were.

And I realised how the continuous shower of the source outside could be made dimmer.

I could do a little more...

So I focus again, and sacrifice some of my structured memories further.

My tails channel this odd power into orders.

And through them my body makes this castle change its architecture a little further.

The leaks are sealed.

The spherical room is layered. The permeability of every wall and ground are made tighter.

No more shining leakage from this place. Keep it together...

And it shows. Already the air feels less electric on the surface of the construct.

I feel shivers and some of my memories turning to glitter in the wind...

But I can still do a little more to help my sisters...

I lift my tails for my last order.

My last wish to make their objectives easier.

I send counter orders through the other machines or organs of this castle, that allow it to float endlessly.

I fail... It won't land on my order that easily.

What I am doesn't matter. I have not enough power to act on this... But I find another way and pulse a material change somewhere else.

The chains and anchors change slightly. They fall deeper, and they slow down the ship gradually.

It still isn't enough... I don't want to dig trails below, but eventually it will stop. When it reaches the end of the upside down peaks.

My body has collapsed, my thoughts now in shambles.

I may have failed to stop or seize control of this castle, but thoughts partially answering my desire now burst inside of me.

It won't drift for ever around the globe. It will stop somewhere nearing the Arctic circle.

Good...

I crawl. Now my diminishing thoughts have no other wishes but to hold my own duty longer.

As long as will be required...

So I stand, consuming my remains of humanity a little further.

For all the years to come...

~