I Can Assimilate Everything

Across countless light years of stellar matter and brilliance within the Star Seas lay the Butchering Grounds- those contested regions where civilizations bled into each other, where the strong consumed the weak in patterns that had repeated since the first consciousness looked at another and thought "mine."

And past the Butchering Grounds, where even the most desperate warriors feared to venture, one could see the Edge of Space.

The Edge was not a wall or barrier in any conventional sense.

It was where the very concept of dimension began to fray, where the three-dimensional space that most beings took for granted started folding in on itself like paper being crumpled by invisible hands.

The horizon curved impossibly, bending back and through itself in patterns that made observers' minds rebel.

Stars near the Edge appeared stretched and compressed simultaneously, their light arriving from directions that shouldn't exist, creating a kaleidoscope effect that had driven more than one explorer to madness.

Here, space ended and the Void began…not darkness, but the absence of the possibility of light.

Not cold, but the negation of the concept of temperature. There should be no form of life at the Edge of Space. There should only be murky weavings of Entropy, the fundamental force of ending made visible as reality itself began to unravel.

But at this moment, a region of the Edge connecting to the Star Seas showed an overabundance of life that violated every known Regulation of existence.

A purple bridge extended from the Void itself, its structure composed of crystallized impossibility that somehow maintained cohesion despite existing in a region where cohesion had no meaning!

The bridge stretched across the Edge of Space, through the folding horizon where direction became suggestion, and into the Star Seas proper.

It was not built…it simply was, as if someone had convinced reality that a pathway should exist and reality, too confused to argue, had complied.

From this bridge extended a grand purple carpet that continued for nine thousand miles through the vacuum of space.

Not floating, no, that would imply it existed in relation to something else. Instead, it simply occupied its trajectory with the certainty of a royal road, each fiber woven from materials that shouldn't exist, leading to something even more impossible: a temple contained inside a pocket dimension that was simultaneously there and not there, visible and invisible, real and theoretical.

The temple itself defied architectural description because it existed in more dimensions than most beings could perceive!

Its walls were suggestions of boundaries, its towers were implications of height, its doors were possibilities of entrance. Around it, dozens of creatures floated in patterns that suggested both random movement and precise choreography.

They looked like…butterflies, if butterflies were designed by something that had only heard descriptions of beauty and had decided to improve upon it with liberal additions of cosmic horror.

Purple-silver wings that caught light that didn't exist, reflecting it in spectrums that shouldn't be visible.

Bodies that seemed solid until observed directly, at which point they became probability clouds with wings.

From the temple, an entire group began floating toward the bridge at the Edge of Space, their movement synchronized in ways that suggested a hive mind or something even more fundamentally connected.

Leading them was an entity that radiated authority in waves that made space itself defer.

Nine pairs of wings spread from its form, each pair a different shade of purple that had no name in any language spoken in the Star Seas.

The wings moved independently yet in harmony, creating patterns that were almost hypnotic, almost meaningful, almost revealing something fundamental about reality that observers weren't quite ready to understand.

Behind it, nine purple tails flowed like liquid thought, each one tipped with what might have been eyes or might have been stars…the distinction seemed unimportant.

Above its head floated a crown that was clearly symbolic rather than functional, purple energy crystallized into a shape that suggested authority over concepts rather than territories.

The crown rotated slowly, each revolution revealing angles that shouldn't exist, facets that reflected futures that hadn't been decided yet.

This entity…this butterfly-king-horror-beauty, floated ahead of the others with movements that suggested it was allowing space to exist around it rather than moving through space itself.

It came to wait before the bridge with the patience of something that measured time in the birth and death of galaxies.

The bridge shimmered, trembled slightly as if reality was clearing its throat, and from the other side came another congregation of butterfly-like creatures!

These ones were mainly purple as well, but they carried blue markings in their coloration instead of silver- the difference seemingly minor but clearly significant to those who could read such signs.

At their forefront floated another royal being, similar in its impossible majesty but different in the specific flavors of its violation of physics.

Its crown was blue-purple, its wings carried patterns that suggested different authorities, different domains of impossibility.

Its eyes, and it definitely had eyes, too many eyes, eyes in places that eyes shouldn't be…lit up with something that might have been amusement as it surveyed its surroundings.

"This is the prized Star Seas Alpha-9 that the Sagittarius Constellations have been hiding for so many years?" The voice emerged not from any mouth but from the vibration of reality itself, carrying undertones of condescension wrapped in false courtesy.

"Haha, how does it feel now that you have to share it, Constellation Ku'La'Ban?"

The butterfly that had come to welcome them…Ku'La'Ban, produced a sound that was somehow a harrumph despite having no lungs, no throat, no physical mechanism for expressing disapproval.

"The more the merrier, Constellation Zi'Da'Pan," Ku'La'Ban responded, its voice carrying the resignation of someone forced to share a favorite toy. "As long as you choose proper tools to sponsor and send to the Butchering Grounds, you will get to design many Fables to draw power from. Of course, you and all others will still have your Fables fall under the central one that was forged by our Sagittarius Constellations."

…!