Worlds Adrift Chapter 12

She remembered a great deal through her dreams. It was a fact that she only recently understood, as she had never been self-aware enough to reflect on her dreams. Lack of self-awareness, though, did not mean that she never chose to introspect, however, because her mind lacked the complexity required to introspect at all. Though, now that she had returned to a stable state of mind after losing herself, she began to recall her life up to that point.

She lived in a forest. And she was happy there despite her lack of intelligence required to question what else there was in the world. She fed off of the food her kind typically did; she ate grass, seeds, and even occasionally bugs. To a human, such a diet could be considered anything from tortuous to inhumane. To a rabbit like her, however, such a diet is a bit odd but nonetheless healthy. She had been in danger many times though. She vividly remembered the terrifying visage of one of those green creatures as it chased her through the forest trying to eat her. Despite her lower position on the food chain, she had been able to evade the creature through use of her small size. It was a victory that only could have been attained by her. She was always a unique creature compared to her other brothers or sisters because she had always been more powerful than any of her rabbit siblings. She had been able to use that strange unique energy that permeated the world more effectively than any of her kind. Despite this, however, the fact that she was a rabbit meant that she was always using her powers to run away.

When she was a more primitive being, she had always used the power to escape and hide, never to fight. She had seen creatures use their power over energy to fight others; the pale looking apes, the giant venom-breathing snakes, and the tiny rock-throwing ants were examples that popped into her mind when she recalled all of those that used their power to hunt. Though, they were eventually all eclipsed by the horde of metal monsters that invaded her forest one day.

They were terrifying. To her razor-sharp mind that had been forged through years of arduous survival and escape, these creatures were things that she had to run away from at all costs. They were dangerous. Those with fewer wits and much stronger muscles or firepower had indeed tried to assault those metal beasts though. She saw many of them try to fight them off or eat them. None survived. None but her survived. All because of the fact that she was a mere rabbit. She recalled a wave of green, duplicating monsters that numbered in the thousands that tried to defeat the metal horde. They were all led by a deep purple ape, with tens of blue apes under it and hundreds of pale apes under them. As the metal horde marched into the area where the rabbit was eating, she hid underground. Eventually she heard the wave of green apes and the metal horde clash. She feared for her life, as her burrow could have caved in, killing her. Despite that, though, she survived, and when she emerged from her burrow, she gazed upon the remains of the green apes. Some were burned, others frozen. Some had been slashed by air blades and some impaled with stone pillars that reached into the sky. There were also some who had been pierced by metal projectiles and others who had been cut in half by some metric that the little, simple-minded rabbit could not fathom. Even the corpse of the deep purple ape, which was one of the most powerful apes out there, could be seen with vines piercing its body and its head consumed by some nightmarish flower. Even after all of the apes were slaughtered, not a single metal creature could be found dead.

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The sheer quantity of blood forced her to move. She was bound by her skittish instincts to run from the smell of blood, and she was driven from the site by predators and scavengers that laid claim to the free pile of unclaimed meat. The little rabbit eventually, after many chases and escapes, found her way to the site of the metal horde. She remembered the place where she found them; they looked to her like giant metal spiders 10 feet tall with bladed legs and hollow fangs that pointed outwards, or at least some of them looked like that. There were others as well, like the four, legged metal trees that seemed to be the workers of the hive, or the large metal birds that could hover in place and seemed to watch the rest of the horde as they went about their business. There were many more, she was sure, but she as a rabbit was never a curious soul. Despite the danger posed by the metal monsters, she made her burrow near where they had stopped, which was an innocuous patch of the forest only notable for the large clearing in the area. The metal creatures were actually good for her in a way, as they eliminated the other predators in the area and generally left the prey alone, though she had no idea why they were there.

The rabbit contemplated the question in her own mind. She was dreaming, remembering. She had no idea why she was able to ask such questions, but she knew it started a long time after the metal hive appeared. 

She left her burrow to forage for grass or whatnot. There were no other animals around, as they were all terrified of the metal hive, which for some reason never bothered her. She saw it, in her primitive mind, as a feature of the landscape that brought security. The previous night saw another attack on the metal hive, but they were crushed like all of the others. The morning sun beat down on the hive’s metal shells and reflected off of the splattered blood. She had been living near the hive for months and she had gotten used to the bloody smell that permeated the forest. She still remembered the sun. And the moon. They were bright in the sky back then. The sun shined its radiant light and warmth onto the forest while the moon hung in the sky with its gentle light. She wished, in that dream, to be able to remember the moon forever, because it was not with her anymore. 

She was eating in the forest when she began to feel the world shaking, and the energy in the air vibrating. The metal hive, for the first time, seemed panicked. The metal spiders began to withdraw from their patrols and the metallic trees rooted themselves into the earth and created a wall that blocked even the sun from intruding on their enclave with their branches. She eventually saw the very air around her begin to melt and heard a sound that could only be that of the very earth itself groaning in pain. The rabbit ran to her burrow for safety and began to hear the ground being shattered and even heard the ground shatter close to where she was. The air continued to melt and eventually all she could see was a blinding blue light. 

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She remembered the feeling in the air when she regained her sight. It felt like the essence of power. She was only able to feel such a way because she was one of the strongest rabbits there was, not that it meant anything. After feeling the air she began to hear the telling sounds of the metal hive’s battling: explosions big and small, fire burning, ice flash freezing, wind whipping, earth being crushed and thrown, metal clashing, water running, plants rustling, lightning crackling and many more. Eventually she heard a sound that she had never heard before. Metal scraping, bending, and breaking. Glassy components being crushed. And, eventually, screams of some different being and yells that seemed to have some rhyme or reason to those that knew their secrets, which the small rabbit did not. She stayed in her burrow for a long time after the last of the screams died out and the battle seemed to end. 

She was scared. Very scared. She was a rabbit that was deeply connected to the power that existed in the world, and from what she felt there was only one thing that came to mind when she felt the mysterious opponent metal hive. A god. A being that should never be trifled with, or at least that was what the rabbit saw a god as. And it was not just one. It was a swarm. It felt like a herd or flock of animals with god-like power had descended on the hive. 

Stuck in her fear, the rabbit heard one noise after it seemed like the dust had settled. Actually it was hundreds if not thousands of noises that all originated from the same type of being. It sounded like a ‘Scraaaa’, but dryer, and it was like nothing that the rabbit could attach to words. After some more waiting after hearing the screech, the rabbit carefully looked out from her burrow. She saw nothing, so she stuck her head from the burrow and froze. Her mind refused, even in dreams, to allow her brain to recall the creature that she saw. All she knew was that it was big. Very, very big. Hundreds of feet long and almost completely dark blue with one black eye. And those eyes stared at her emerging from her burrow. It watched her.

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