Metamorphosis Chapter Alpha (extract)




Primus

No warm broth long-simmering for this world;
No Edicaran soft-bodied sponges,
Slow sea pigs living their countless generations
In sun-pooled shallow seas.

Lost makers forged this wanderer from adamant and orichalcum
The cosm of Astronomicon—world-sphere and Titan,
Planned with compass whose turning was the turning of an age
Then went their way, and now their names extinct.

As curled embryo he slept long epochs.
Plates of continents formed skin. His molars dwarfed Olympus.
In their orbits turned eye-moons, and when he stirred
In dreaming their light glowed lunar crescents.

He may have slept till all stars faded,
When singularities dissolve and the last proton decays
Except there came a spark.
Deep within, Jovian engines stirred.
Dark mechanism tectonic spun
Great rifts cracked world-symmetry.
The world egg split, revealing long-bent limbs
And newborn Primus quaking awoke to cry.

But space is dark, and old, and ancient plans gone wrong
Had loosed a predator god,
Leviathan that hearing Primus’ silent wail
Came crawling through wormholes
Hard-clawed through realities,
Creeping to devour the newly-wakened child.
UNICRON was its oft-cursed name,
and TIAMAT of crowns and horns,
CRONUS and SATURN it was called, eldritch king,
GALACTUS, world-eater,
And AZATHOTH the maelstrom.
Already the third-part of all light it had consumed
Vast empires beyond Azimech and Gianfar,
Its hunger still unsated.






Comments

D said…
Glossary

Edicaran: The geologic period including the first animal life, directly before the Cambrian era.
sea pig: a soft-bodied transparent sea creature related to sea cucumbers.
adamant: a mythical silvery metal famed for its strength and hardness.
orichalcum: a mythical coppery metal associated with Atlantis.
cosm: refers to the microcosm (human) and macrocosm (cosmos)
astronomicon: a book that discusses the similarities between the human and the universe. Da Vinci's Vitruvian man, inscribed in a square and circle, is related to this tradition.
Jovian: related to Jupiter, in this case simply indicating large size.
tectonic: relating to the motion of continental plates.
Leviathan: a powerful sea serpent in the Old Testament.
Tiamat: the seven-head dragon representing the primordial chaos in Babylonian mythology.
Cronus and Saturn: In Roman mythology, Saturn was the king of the Gods in the generation before Zeus, infamous for eating his children. Cronus was the corresponding Greek deity.
Galactus: In Marvel comics, Galactus is a humanoid being who devours worlds.
Azathoth: One of the Old Gods in H.P. Lovecraft's mythos who represents primordial chaos and is destined to destroy all order.
OOOooo. I'd Love more. Is Beta in the works?
D said…
I came across a fragment of Paradise Lost and realized that the capitalized names (and probably a lot more) came from a subconscious memory of that.

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