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.