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Link: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/of-flesh-might-and-mutations-the-red-queen-provides-warhammer-40k-si-amalgamate.1031843/
( If one would tell me I would one day become a horrific monster that should not exist, then I would have either slapped them, punched them in the face, or laughed long and hard. But, well hmm. They would have been right, but it wouldn't hurt any less.
Now I have this stupid buzzing in the back of my head, I am an amorphous amalgamation of pathogen-like cells. Made of Flesh, filled with Might, and wrought with Mutations. I... need to rest, I think. )
Prologue: Subsume to Die
So here is another piece of SI Trash, one that is directly inspired by a certain The-Black-Aengel-Mrk7 and frankly this idea tickled my Muse so she has blessed me with such eldritch horror. That and I've been playing some Prototype, Carrion, Terraria, and XCOM 2 WOTC and my Muse has been molesting my brain and giving me this fucking abomination.
Now you may be wondering "What the fuck is the Amalgamate?" While it is for you to find out and for you to absolutely abhor and detest it's very existence. Here is a spoiler for whoever wants to know at least the gist of it.
Spoiler: The Amalgamate
"Common Explanation"
The Amalgamate is on all accounts a 'sentient' living virus, a physical amorphous plague. It is a crimson red goop (trust me, goop is the best word here) that looks like a liquid when it is settled, but in actuality it is flesh that is both fluid and solid. It spreads over the ground, under the ground and can subsume organic or inorganic materials into itself, mutating, subverting, changing, and turning whatever it touches into a horrible macabre version of what it once was.
(A more in-depth explanation will be available some other time.)
Hope ya'll like another piece of trash from me, and say hello to the Eien of this timeline, The Red Queen.
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Prologue: Subsume to Die
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Death is the fate of all living beings, even beings that were never alive in the first place, they just have a very different form of death. Why am I giving a lecture about death? Well it's because I fucking died, and as far as I know, all I 'see' is death around me. I don't know what happened to me after I died but it is hard to see, hard to hear, I don't know if I am alive at all but what I do know is that I can FEEL.
Now what I feel is important, because I felt many things. Things that have touched me, and while it was hard to hear, it did not mean I was deaf. I heard faint screams, I felt the touch of these things come deeper into me, and I have felt myself... for lack of a better term 'enter' these things. It is hard to see, but what I feel allowed me to 'see' what I touched and what touched me.
Machines, tools, metals, scraps, rocks, humans, man, woman, child, animal, I felt them all, and I felt them fall into me. I should feel... much more alarmed at this, and I was... after the first few hundred times. The... 'sight' of death lost its horror after I felt the 365th soul fall into me never to return.
But, with every 'touch' I grew stronger, heard more, saw more. I may not know where I am, but I did hear whoever stood at the 'edge' of my 'sight', people whose voices are muddled, words I could barely understand. All I know are the names he, she, they and many others gave me.
The Red Bloom, The Crimson Touch, The Many from the Abyss, The Amalgamate.
Certain people say that names have power, and I certainly felt like that although my names were simple, they were quite powerful.
It was thanks to the subsumption of the sentients, mostly humans, I was able to understand the language, and it was due to their assistance that I knew and did not know where I am currently. Their memories all coordinate that I am really far down in some place called The Abyss, it doesn't exactly tell me where I am. But I know I'm not in my original reality, because the machines, tools, and even the scraps of materials that have fallen into me are very different to the ones of my homeworld.
Frankly I find my situation interesting, granted it has been about... I don't know how long has it been since I awoken here. Trying hard to cry and scream at the world, it didn't help that only I could hear my own wails inside my head and that I could not make a sound outside.
I spent most of the time trying to figure out what exactly am I, because I know for a fact that I am not human at all. Looking into myself was easy and at the same time it wasn't, because what I 'saw' was strange. I'm not exactly a living creature, but at the same time I am?
Whoever gave me the name Amalgamate was the most accurate in what term I can use to describe myself. I am an amalgamation of countless microscopic cells, now these cells are very strange because I can tell what size each one is and they are about 200 nanometers in diameter. Fairly uniform in appearance, a dark reddish color with a semi-transparent membrane and a more red 'fleshy' nucleus in the center.
Now what makes me so different when everything are basically various combinations of various cells? The thing that makes me so different is because my cells are all identical, there is no variance aside from slight changes in membrane patterns, but overall every cell that is a part of me are functionally identical.
My senses are generally a lot more acute and accurate now, at least my touch is, I'm still working on my sight and hearing. But my sense of touch basically gave me a clue as to what I can do as this amorphous amalgamation of cells I'm calling Blood Buds.
The reason why I am calling the cells that is because they aren't exactly ordinary cells, they function similarly to... well, pathogens. Which means things like viruses, bacteria, infectious agents among other things. How do I know this? Well my sense of touch comes into play, everything that has ever fallen into me was subject to my touch, subject to the Blood Buds, and I could feel their touch upon the different beings inorganic and organic.
With inorganic materials and objects like metals, machines and the like, the buds slowly 'flow' over them. Not technically subsuming them but instead working around them, getting into all the little crevices they can find, then the buds 'bloom' for lack of a better term, the feeling of 'flesh' growing over these objects and metals, 'colonies' of Blood Buds gather and form on the object before I can briefly 'see' through it's 'eyes', the colonies it had then released the blood buds it carried onto me. That was all they did, because well, before my first organic the objects and machines didn't really have any limbs it could use to move around.
Now, that was just inorganic matter, stuff that was never alive in the first place. I had organic creatures fall into me, and they had it... I guess one can say it is worse? Basically to them I am a pathogen on all kinds of horrific steroids, and since they fell into me, they all felt and were subject to a potent mixture of Blood Buds.
The cells flowed into their bodies like a massive wave of water flooding through the different windows and doors on the first and second floor of a house. The eyes, nose, mouth, skin pores, upper body and lower body, wounds, scars, and other points of entry were flooded with Blood Buds and I could feel it all.
I was horrified at first, I wanted to spit them out of me, save them, prevent them from being infected, but it did not matter. The Blood Buds travelled through their bodies, contaminating blood vessels, consuming organic matter down to bones, imitating cell structures and its cellular functions, blooming into colonies of Blood Buds.
Colonies of Blood Buds don't just generate more Blood Buds, but they can mutate themselves, blooming into something entirely different. The various organics I have... subsumed, whether they be human or animal, have their genetic information stored within the amalgamation that is myself, then the colonies of blood buds look at the anatomical information stored and mimic them. This made it so the host body can grow additional limbs, orifices, among other things.
I'm not one so easily disturbed, but... body horror on this scale makes me shudder. I AM however proud to say that the first time I could get a mind's picture of what my first mutated organic was, I only mentally screamed for I think three days, or was it a week? I have a hard time keeping track of time, I wish someone had a bloody clock they could throw my way so I can tell the time.
But yeah, pretty much all that have fallen into my dark crimson abyss are forever changed. Physically and mentally.
More or less, the Blood Buds are... sentient-ish? I can feel all of them, 'see' all of them, and even need be direct them myself. Especially Colonies, as they share their intelligence to the point they have some form of sapience, the bigger the colony the smarter they get. On an individual cell level? They are like tiny puppies and... it's kind of cute in a weird, morbid, infectious pathogen loving way.
Also the first time I could finally see inside myself with the various bodies, I was not really expecting what I saw. From 'within' me, it was like looking at stuff underwater, only a hell of a lot darker... like an endless black sea, and that if you looked down you would see countless red flecks of different sizes until you realize that those red flecks are fucking 'eyes' staring up at you. If I was still a human, I would be freaking out in a fit of Thalassophobia, because like the fucking ocean the deeper you go the darker it gets and that is pretty much what I see through the bodies. The only form of 'light' would be if you head up to the surface.
Now I thought I could simply use one of the bodies and have them swim... up... me, ok that sounded really weird but let's move on, and it could work, but the bodies have sunken far too deep for me to use them immediately. So all I can do really is just wait.
On the bright side as of this moment I am beginning create pseudo-colonies on the surface of my amalgamated form, this should allow me to finally see outside of my amorphous body and see where exactly am I. I only know the name and general appearance of my location, as soon as one of my... constructs I suppose is a good name for the subsumed organics, as soon as one of them breaches and leaves my body then I can take control and explore around.
But for now, just gaining the ability to see and hear my surroundings, as well as finally see who is throwing shit and who is throwing people into me.
Hmm? I can faintly hear someone coming. Is this another talker? Is this another one who throws shit into me? Or is this some moronic fool who came to see my bubbling dark crimson black form?
One thing is for certain that seems to be a constant when it comes to humanity.
We like poking things to see what it does, even if the thing we are poking is visibly very dangerous.
It would only be until a while later when I realize.
I have been poked repeatedly.
Behold, a new story. One inspired by a Black Aengel, and I hope you all find The Red Queen disturbing, even if just a little bit.
Now, just so you know for now. The terms aren't final just yet, I am still thinking of if they will fit but I think they do fit. With Eien's understanding of the shit that makes up her Amalgamated form.
Blood Buds = Every single cell that makes up Eien and her constructs.
Colonies = Concentrated collections of Blood Buds, can be used to generate more Blood Bud cells or undergo mutation into appendages, limbs, among other things.
Bloom = The act of a Blood Bud cell mutating.
Construct = Mostly either an organic or rarely an inorganic object that has been subsumed, covered by Blood Bud cells and Colonies.