The Cosmic Beast
There is an immense cosmic beast that hails from a quasar, born in the accretion disc of a supermassive black hole. From a distance it would look like a lone asteroid drifting through space, though the fact that it does not behave like one might give pause to any keen observer.
The beast has no name, no arms or legs or tail, though it may have had them once. Its massive back is a relatively flat rocky surface covered with regolith, tapering at the front and back. The beast’s giant head lays encrusted within its own cavern beneath the front end of the surface, its vital bodily organs entombed within a thick, pocked dome that runs the length of its body.
If it has a purpose, it has forgotten. It does not know if there are others like it out there in the depths of space, or if it is the only one. It has no knowledge of where it is going, yet intuitively corrects its course from time to time.
Even when observed from close proximity the beast might have looked like just an unusually shaped hunk of rock, if it were not for the gigantic towers spaced in regular intervals along its back. Those misshaped formations grow from the rocky hide of the beast, encompassing sensitive quills. Strange bulbous pods cluster around the base of these towers, tiny in comparison. If an observer were to linger, they might see one of those pods hatching, a hairless, blue-skinned humanoid emerging. No ordinary life can live here, yet there are thousands of the blue-skinned Argad slowly ascending the towers, and they are not the only beings existing on this inhospitable beast. For every tower there is an Onu: cadaverous, winged psychopomps that tend to the Argad once they have completed their journey.
The beast has no name, no arms or legs or tail, though it may have had them once. Its massive back is a relatively flat rocky surface covered with regolith, tapering at the front and back. The beast’s giant head lays encrusted within its own cavern beneath the front end of the surface, its vital bodily organs entombed within a thick, pocked dome that runs the length of its body.
If it has a purpose, it has forgotten. It does not know if there are others like it out there in the depths of space, or if it is the only one. It has no knowledge of where it is going, yet intuitively corrects its course from time to time.
Even when observed from close proximity the beast might have looked like just an unusually shaped hunk of rock, if it were not for the gigantic towers spaced in regular intervals along its back. Those misshaped formations grow from the rocky hide of the beast, encompassing sensitive quills. Strange bulbous pods cluster around the base of these towers, tiny in comparison. If an observer were to linger, they might see one of those pods hatching, a hairless, blue-skinned humanoid emerging. No ordinary life can live here, yet there are thousands of the blue-skinned Argad slowly ascending the towers, and they are not the only beings existing on this inhospitable beast. For every tower there is an Onu: cadaverous, winged psychopomps that tend to the Argad once they have completed their journey.
Cosmic by The Ephemeral Man
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