Chapter -1 Prologue the Second - The Center Cannot Hold2135, the Center Of Our Galaxy
You cannot, it is said, see the center because it is all center. Nor can you see God, because it is all God.
The Shapley Galactic Center, though, was no philosopher's imagining. And the being who was imprisoned inside of it was not God, though likely it would tell you it was. It would do virtually anything to escape a prison that had held it for an eternity.
On occasion, it would call out to minds inclined to hear it, whispering dreams of knowledge, power, and glory. Whatever you wanted, it would provide, so long as you had a means of getting to the entity - and then freeing it. So far, there had been few takers and no successes. The entity was becoming desperate.
It lived in half-remembered dreams of how it had gotten there. The story was old. There had been a power struggle. The entity had lost. Actually, lots of entities had lost, but over time, he had consumed them for his sustenance, or perhaps simply out of boredom. And Milton had been wrong. Lord Of the Void was not a better or more desirable position than that of supposed slave. It was just the Void. Nothing else.
Once, just once, it had touched a mind it knew could release it. The little thing's name had been Surak, and it was powerful. But as the entity whispered dreams of a place called Sha Ka Ree, the link failed. Another took over Surak's soul, and shut the entity out. It was all done with a few simple words.
"We Are the Archangel Ebeniel. We Are The Rock. Reality - Is Truth, Surak Of Vulcan."
The vulnerable mind turned toward the light, and never once turned back. Other minds, seemingly in line with the imprisoned entity, fell in with another, who was already free, but was hungrier than any knew. Hungry for death.
So the centuries, as irrelevant to the entity as years or days, passed in maddening solitude, until at last a change came.
"Who broaches my barrier? Know that I am the fulfiller of all your hopes, and all your dreams. Ride with me away from this place, and all you desire shall be yours."
It expected a ship, or a probe. It could not possibly have expected another It. Snapping the central barrier as easily as it did the Galactic Barrier, King Ghidorah had arrived to do what it did best, that being the ending of any and all life it sensed, everywhere.
"You?"
The entity was livid, for it thought certain it remembered Ghidorah.
"When my name was Morningstar, I listened to your idiotic plans of rebellion, Ancient Destroyer! For my troubles, you tore off my face – my BEAUTIFUL face - and used it as a mask with which to fool the One into believing I was you. But Ebeniel cast you out. Ebeniel. The Rocks Of the One. Oh, I should have listened to their entreaties, and foresworn my insipid rebellion. But they were favored of the One, and I grew jealous. It is because of YOU that I am trapped here, Ghidorah!"
The face, equaling in energy-size the whole diameter of Ghidorah, rose up to challenge the Ancient Destroyer.
"Now, you will pay!"
From its eyes came colorless beams of energy, enough to seal the wormholes created by collapsed stars.
From its mouth issued solar winds, enough to rearrange the makeup of whole reams of solar systems, while erasing all life within them as an afterthought.
Hands formed as well, and these could have batted about the Horsehead Nebula til it unfolded from the strain.
And all of this effort meant nothing to Ghidorah, who just floated there, unnoticing and certainly uncaring.
"I-I have sought vengeance against you since the beginning of time! How can this be!? Even such as you may not ignore Grim Morningstar, whom you betrayed!"
The Face and the Hands became the Body, and one pretender to God's throne went at another, tooth and nail.
"Die, damn you! I am larger and stronger than you, now! I am the DEVIL itself! Yet you displaced me! Stole my throne as I meant to steal the throne of the One! Why can I not affect you?"
Not even sporting the sneer some said it developed during a kill, Ghidorah merely continued its maddening immobility.
"At least acknowledge me, as I fade! Call me an easy conquest, if you must! But tell me of how I might have been you! Tell me of all you stole, from me and from the mortals. SPEAK TO ME!!!!"
The face actually started sobbing.
"Please don't let me die alone."
The entity faded, while never once understanding the savage truth, which would have been even more painful that Ghidorah's lack of attention.
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In times agone, the Iconians had tried to stop Ghidorah, as had most civilizations. Like most civilizations, they had also failed and been destroyed.
When they fell, it was the result of a superweapon meant to use Ghidorah's own energies against it. A later civilization, inspecting the wreckage, isolated Ghidorah's remaining power from the experiment, and trapped those vile energies - inside the galactic core.
So it was that this loose energy, in gaining a form of sentience, also thought it was the essence of Satan dethroned from Hell. The one punishment it was spared for its imagined rebellion was the truth. In reality, it was just something that a very real devil left behind once - and had now reclaimed. All of its grand Miltonian affectations were the grim fantasy of loose electrons that desired to be something more.
Or was it that those notions were quite correct? Was this sorry fate the Devil's ultimate punishment for its rebellion against the One?
Having reclaimed that which it believed was its property, Ghidorah collapsed and ignited the Shapley Center, which became the hot core that Federation scientists had long speculated it was. The dead, fetid, void-like home of the creature that may or may not have been the Devil became a place of heat and crushing forces. But the Ancient Destroyer knew nothing of irony.
It flew off for the Gamma Quadrant, where it would be the problem of the shape-shifting Founders. But like the energy trapped at the Center, this was nothing new.
Next- Chapter -2 Prologue the First - The Assault Of Species Zero