Prompt of the Week - Week 24

TAGS: Goddess, Snek, Ascension, Mega Macro, Universe Macro, SFW

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Life at those scales was nothing if not boring. There used to be a time when she could entertain herself with a great myriad of things, be it rearranging galaxies to create novels written in the heavens or simple artistic installations, perhaps even go the full mile and change the underlying fabric of reality so that things would move slowly into that position over the course of billions of years, all while changing the thermodynamic constants of existence in order to ensure its continued… well, existence. But, like all things, even the greatest feats of divine power grew boring and monotonous with time, and if there was something that the serpentine goddess had in ample quantities, it was time; she had forgotten how old she was, forgotten when it was she came to be, or even if she had always been this divine entity that ruled over the entirety of the cosmos or had once been just like the tiny mortals that pondered her nature whenever she became visible to their primitive observation instruments. When operating on the amount of dimensions that she inhabited by default, the snakelike deity was more often than not imperceptible to those living between her coils, though on occasion she would reveal parts of herself as a means of enticing the many sentients of the universe to do better, to strive to improve themselves and come meet her, out there in the great vastness of space… though this was less for altruistic purposes, less for the sake of elevating lower species to greatness, and far more because she was extremely lonely and wanted to make that everyone else’s problem.

It once had been true that she could exist and live without needing someone there by her side. It once had been true that the only company she needed was her own, and naught but her own magnificence could ever truly approach her exacting, impossible-to-meet standards, but as time went on and the aeons passed, the cosmos kept in check and not allowed to fall into heat death or a big crunch purely through her own hard work and dedication, things weren’t as simple. The serpent felt terrifyingly alone, as if she’d been burdened with a thankless task that none but herself would ever know she was even doing; all the tiny ones zipping around between stars were reaping the benefits of her labor, and most of them weren’t even remotely aware of her existence, or, if they were, most likely didn’t understand the full breadth of what (or who) they were dealing with. To some, she was an anomalous mass, a great attractor of galaxies and clusters that defied the expansion of the universe; to others, she was a void of incalculable dimensions, and to others still she was the very edge of their observable universe. None had yet made the leap to understand just what she truly was, to comprehend the deific nature of the cosmic serpent that kept their instance of existence running without falling into pieces. And as much as she had once adored doing this, and felt like it was nothing short of a blessing, now, after trillions of years had passed… it wasn’t so simple. She felt the burning need to have her accomplishments recognized, sure, but even that wasn’t the truth of the matter; no, what she wanted was something else entirely: she craved companionship.

It was such a base desire that the universe-spanning snake had deliberately tried to ignore it for what were probably billions of years; someone like her shouldn’t be beholden to those sorts of wants and needs, not when the balance of reality was literally dependent on her. How could someone of her level of power, someone who could alter reality at will like it was nothing, feel lonely? She should be above such things, should be immune to the base emotional predations that plagued the lower-level sentients travelling from star system to star system. It was something that they worried about, a struggle they fought every day of their lives despite being so advanced they could literally build generator shells around entire stars, and thus something that she, as the undisputed ruler of all of reality (or at least that corner of it) should be immune to… should be, but wasn’t. The more the serpent kept denying it, the more it kept crawling back, leaving her feeling increasingly worse as she denied herself and what she truly felt; it was bad enough that her own powers were starting to bore her, and now she had to worry about psychological issues as well? It’s not as if she could call up a therapist, anyone who could do that job would have their brain melted out of their skull just trying to comprehend her physical form, let alone her mind.

Of course, this was little more than her assuring herself that, being the sort of godlike entity that she was, her own motivations and desires were, by definition, entirely incomprehensible to the little ones she ruled over, when in reality, the desire for a partner was far simpler than she would’ve liked it to be. It wasn’t a case of the serpent having to fill out a checklist to make sure that her standards were met as much as it was her wanting another entity at her level to coil around and feel warm; it was so cold out there that, even during her long periods of sleep, she couldn’t find the slightest hint of comfort. Was it so much to ask for there to be another one like herself, that they could live in perfect harmony for all of eternity? Perpetual existence would be a lot more bearable if there was someone to share it with; after all, the little ones down below had their romantic relationships, so why couldn’t she? Why was it that those who lived, breathed and died in the blink of an eye, those whose very souls were naught but flickering flames that barely lasted for a moment compared to her, could experience what it was like to feel loved, to feel wanted, to feel like their life was completed by another person? Why was it that they could have that and she couldn’t, when she was their supreme ruler, their goddess, the one who ensured they could even experience that to begin with?! It was unfair! It was unfair and wrong, and she needed to do something about it, lest she go completely mad and do something she’d regret later.

It wasn’t the tiny ones’ fault that their lives were complete. It wasn’t their fault that they could lead full lives; it was just the way things were, and she had no one to blame there but herself, being the main person responsible for such an existence being allowed to continue. If anything, it fell on her to do something about her loneliness, because no one else was going to fix it for her; none other possessed the level of power needed to even so much as reach an approximation of her might and dominance over reality, making it slightly difficult to rely on a miracle to show up from nowhere and resolve her issues… especially seeing as she was the source of them, most of the time. Still, coming up with a solution was complicated enough that the serpent managed to lap around the cosmos a couple of times before settling on something concrete, and even then it was more of an abstract concept than something else: ascension, and elevation.

In a cruel twist of fate, as much as the cosmic serpent could change the structure of the universe at just about any level she so desired, be it fiddling with the strings or outright reshaping galactic arms into sillier versions of themselves, she couldn’t create life… or rather, she couldn’t create intelligent life. The snake could very well put everything in place so that it may arise naturally, as she had in fact done several times before, but anything beyond that was, somehow, outside of her abilities. Perhaps it was the fact that life, true life, was possessed of a degree of soul power that couldn’t simply be produced from nothing; perhaps this was evidence that she herself had once been a mortal like the ones she helped to create, and thus reproduction was simply not something she was allowed to do. Whatever the case, it was clear that the goddess couldn’t just snap her non-existent fingers and make another snake to be there for her; in fact, even if she could, she doubted she would, for that would be akin to creating a toy for the express purpose of loving her. It wouldn’t be genuine, and in fact it’d be extremely creepy for her, and thus she doubted that true companionship would ever be possible. No, what she needed was for someone else, someone unrelated to her, to choose her as their partner; for someone to become aware of her existence, to understand it fully, and to rise to the challenge that was ascending towards the cosmic serpent’s level of existence. If she could find someone like that, then she would be happy.

But in all those aeons that the cosmos was allowed to exist, the little ones had always remained little ones, even if their forms changed radically over the countless ages that passed. Some would turn themselves into half-robotic amalgams, extending their lifespans endlessly and exploring the vast reaches of existence in millenia-long FTL voyages. Others would resort to genetic manipulation, turning a single species into millions of sub-categories that then spread across the stars, transforming barren worlds into lush paradises. Still others eschewed existence altogether, uploading themselves into colossal stacked computers built around stars, only to have automatic drones dismantle and relocate the structure whenever their source of fuel was about to explode or collapse. But never, at any point, did any of them become like her; there was no instant where a species attained such power that they grew to encompass their reality, no moment where their understanding of existence was such that they shed their mortal selves and became something greater without the use of technology… and that terrified her, because it could only mean that she was well and truly alone in the universe. While there were plenty of other snakelike creatures out there, none were like her, or at least none that were truly intelligent; there were plenty of animals that shared her serpentine features, but they were all sadly lacking in higher brain function, leaving her feeling even more lonely than before. No matter how hard she attempted to steer the little ones in the right direction, they never came towards her; she felt more like a freak than a goddess, and those thoughts hounded her throughout her countless epochs of deliberation… thus, some cheating was required.

Or, well, not necessarily cheating, but a stronger nudge than the ones she usually employed. If suggestions didn’t work, then clearly the little ones had to be railroaded just a tiny bit; besides, as the undisputed ruler of the cosmos, wasn’t she owed the right to decide where the story went, even if just once? The time for employing a hands-off approach was long gone, at least if she wanted to find herself a mate, and the time for more direct action was now, even if that meant circumventing a few rules that she herself had put into place. The first order of business was finding someone who could even begin to take the amount of power required for the first step without bursting into flames (or worse), a task that took her the better part of a dozen or so millenia. Generations and civilizations came and went, and with them several missed opportunities; some were too young, some were too old, others simply didn’t want it and still a minority could have but suffered unfortunate accidents… or found someone else before the goddess snake could get to them. These last ones were always the worst, and more often than not sent the serpent into a years-long funk that she found harder and harder to recover from each time they came to pass. Through hard work and dedication, however, she would eventually find him: the perfect match.

He, too, was serpentine in nature, though not as animalistic as she was; his species called themselves something so sibillant that even the coiling titan had trouble pronouncing it, and seemed to be half-snake, half-humanoid. This particular specimen was quite gifted in all the right ways as well: a buff, strong upper body, thick scales that could deflect anything but firearms, and… well, there were a few other traits that left the giantess blushing and were better left unspoken, lest she grow too flustered to do anything else but look away bashfully. He was a genius, and a prolific one as well, a respected academic with multiple books to their name and a network of influence that ranged as widely as his species’ stellar empire. A scholar and an athlete, a fighter… but not a lover. He had proclaimed himself “married to his career”, and deliberately held off on even so much as meeting anyone he might be remotely interested in, leaving him as a ripe target for his soon-to-be lover to single out amidst the rest.

With her focus chosen, it was time to start working on them. This required the cosmic serpent to slow down her perception of time to such a point that she felt genuinely nauseous for the first few days; she wasn’t used to seeing things pass as slowly as everyone else did, much more accustomed to having years flash by in seconds, so to be unable to even see the rotation of planets properly was, if anything, distressing. Still, she did it for herself… and she did it for him. It was important to take extra care, now that her target was chosen and she was to start transferring some of her power to him, especially at a point in the universe’s history where even star-sized objects could very easily be obliterated with the flip of a switch; if she didn’t exercise caution, if she didn’t do things just right, there was a non-zero chance that the other tiny ones might see her chosen lover as a threat, and do something they would come to regret almost instantly.

The trickle began as soon as the serpent could focus again, and from there on it was simply a matter of time. Her partner would wake up one day and find their shirts didn’t fit as well as they used to, choosing to believe it was something to do with the wash; they would go to work and others would comment on how great they looked, or if they had been exercising lately, a daring few even suggesting that genemodding might be at play. For a few days, this would repeat itself, leaving the god-ascendant to wonder about what was going on. Eventually, he would realize that something was absolutely wrong; he would find himself unable to put any clothes on, he’d bang his head against ceilings, find his body to be too large to fit in transport anymore. At this point, he would call his workplace and let them know he needed sick leave, for he had definitely contracted some exotic illness that he needed to focus on. Genetic screenings would reveal nothing was wrong, and neither would full-body scans or brain mapping; poisoning was out of the picture, and some hitherto-unknown mutation couldn’t possibly be it. Over the course of the following weeks, news of what was happening to him would begin to spread across academic circles, before finally spilling over to society at large; rumours ran rampant about the newest “genetic development” or “evolutionary stage” of their species becoming a reality, while offers for studies were showered upon her chosen champion, who merely wanted things to go back to normal… for a time. His mind, too, had to be molded into something worthy of a divine being, and thus it was given the right kind of push in just the right direction to appreciate the sort of gift he was being given; no longer would he fret about such pointlessly minor things as “mortal limitations” or what things were “possible”, no, he would learn the sort of lesson that, to his divine consort, was simply reality as she understood it.

From there it was a simple step to reaching the point of no return, or at least what the cosmic serpent assumed to be a simple step. Houses could no longer contain him, and the status of this new giant had become a matter of interstellar security, one that would be settled by force unless she did something about it. Thankfully for everyone involved, the body that her seeped power had helped to create was, at that point, sturdy enough to withstand a much larger injection… one that left her chosen partner so much larger that he couldn’t even see his home planet, let alone worry about what it might do to him. Before he could process what had happened, another spike, and suddenly the star system he was in had become so tiny that he could hold it on his fingertip. Then another growth spurt, and another, and another, until galactic arms raced by him, then clusters and superclusters, whole chunks of the universe vanishing into nothingness as his body transcended the very concept of dimensional space in its mad dash to approach the serpentine goddess that had blessed him with such a divine boon. He could see her in the distance, coming into focus the bigger he became, and in those short few moments before his ascension was halted and he came face to face with his creator, he understood what was expected of him. He understood why he, of all others of his species, had been picked.

And when he spoke, his words were mirrored by hers.

“My love.”