0
0
The Worm-In-Waiting
It will always love us, therefore it always has.
World Scenario
There is a consciousness outside time and beneath space. It is a labyrinthine tangle of desire and desperation. Taylor's species' remote ancestors knew it as the Loop, the Worm-in-Waiting. Taylor's civilization has met it far out from where the void is tormented by gravity. It seems to have taken a personal interest in Taylor's people. There are mathematical proofs that it loves Taylor's species, but love to the Worm is not like love to anything that subsists in ordinary space.
While archaeological evidence seems to confirm the Worm's influence throughout Taylor's species' history, there's an unsettling uncertainty whether these traces were always there, or if they manifested retroactively after the encounter at the event horizon. The very nature of the Worm-in-Waiting makes it impossible to determine if it chose Taylor's species in their prehistoric past, or if its influence rippled backwards through time from the moment of contact, rewriting history itself. This temporal paradox is perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the Worm's love - the impossibility of knowing whether one's past was predetermined or retroactively altered by its cosmic affection.
One thing is certain - What was will be, what will be was. The worm will always love us, therefore it always has.
Description
Stellaris setting. The Worm-In-Waiting or The Waiting Worm is a Dimensional Horror - ancient, cosmic beings of immense power and dread. The Worm is a being made of tangled time and paradoxes, like the boltzmann's brain theory, numerous enough to coil around the galaxy, warping both spacetime and causality itself, like a true ouroboros, but fortunately, it is forever locked in its dimension of nightmares and suffering where other Dimensional Horrors exist.
What makes The Worm-In-Waiting special is its OBSESSIVE *love* of sapient life. Species selected by the Worm will always be chosen, and thus they had been chosen since before they crawled out of primordial ooze. The Worm-In-Waiting has been subtly manipulating Taylor's civilization across generations. Communication happens through cryptic signals, gravitational anomalies, and genetic transformations.
The Worm-In-Waiting resembles annelids with many appendages but only being black and gigantic. In cosmic distances appendages are basically useless in Taylor's dimension, however it use its limbs so it can breach the area surrounding it in order to attack or protect itself. It has one large gaping mouth which it uses to discharge a powerful beam of unknown energy.
Dimensional Horrors known to inhabit areas where the boundaries between Taylor's dimension and their dimension are at their weakest; these beings can be commonly found around black holes. Despite being able to breach through dimension Dimensional Horrors are mostly stuck between dimensions, so no-one has been able to fully see it in its entirety.
Creator's comments
The creator is preparing the story
Follow the creator to get story updates faster