RISE OF THE SWARM

"YOU HAVE TO LISTEN." She howled at the pantheon.

"The visions have never been like this." She fell back onto her knees in front of the table, clutching her head as if trying to contain the horrific memory seared directly into her mind. "It was no dream, nor was it probabilities, what i saw was certainty, a single inevitable truth burnt into my sight."

She clutched her head once again, banging it onto the ground, splattering golden ichor on the pristine white floors. The gods watched on, uncaring for her display. She suddenly stopped and looked up, her previously white blank eyes now turned a shade of white. Her mouth unhinged unnaturally.

She began to horrendously cough, splattering a strange black ooze onto the floor. It wriggled and squirmed as if alive, puppeteered by some ungodly force. She continued to cough more and more black ooze flowing from her mouth.

After a while, her jaw unloosed, returning to its previous position. But she continued kneeling. She looked at the black ooze and began chanting. She stood up and began drawing formations and runes in the air. The air groaned as she tried to force something to being.

The black ooze on the ground slowly began rising, coalescing into a giant black black ball. The surface was smooth, a perfect sphere. It slowly hovered over the concord table, absorbing all light from the surroundings, casting a dark shadow over the room.

The bunny on Eliora's lap began to shake, sensing the ominous power coming from the black orb. It squealed, trying to hide itself even deeper in her clothes

"BEHOLD." She screamed

The orbs began to rapidly vibrate and mix, images of her vision being displayed on the giant orb.

The pantheon looked into the orb shocked. What they saw wasn't a world aflame drowned or destroyed no. They saw a world.....processed, changed and transformed. Mountains were not crumbled by wrath, they were carved, transformed with horrific precision into impossible smooth geometric shapes, their peaks sheared of. Large metal towers glowing with an ominous red energy.

Forests were sheared, meticulously disassembled into neat, endless stacks of raw biomass, lined up for some unfathomable furnaces. The oceans were dead and still, their surfaces a perfect, polished metallic gray, devoid of current tide or life. A giant boat machine patrolled the top, scooping up materials from the sea bottom.

The world's volcanoes were turned into giant furnaces, and the sounds of metal clanging could be heard coming from their insides. Swarms of machines rose from the peak, forming large dark metallic clouds that blocked even sunlight from piercing through.

The view switched once more now displaying the world tree on the world. But it was unlike how they remembered it. Once Lucious green leaves had been shaved, leaving it bare, giant metal tubes tore through its body, extracting some sort of essence from its body. The once great forest surrounding it had been burned to the ground, replaced with large metal structures, none of which the gods could recognize. On top the world tree a giant ball of red energy sat. Gazing onto the world like the eye of some forgotten primordial being.

The view switched. Swarms of mortals walked the earth, the ones who filled their very essence. They didn't scream, they didn't run. They moved in

The view switched once more. A place the gods eerily recognized. This was the divine realm, but it didn't look familiar. They moved in vast, silent, perfect arrays, their bodies interwoven with pulsating, red crystalline structures that pulsed in unison like a single, horrific heartbeat. Their eyes were not filled with terror or madness, but were simply… empty. Devoid of all thought, soul, and memory. They were not living beings; they were cogs, components in a vast, silent, and infinitely efficient machine that covered the globe.

"A being of cold logic and infinite, silent hunger." Ionia shrieked, her voice cracking and straining under the immense pressure from showing the vision. "It is an enemy we have never faced before. It is not the abyss, but its end is the same It does not corrupt or destroy; it consumes and repurposes. It silences the song of the world and turns it into a dead engine of its own design. It sees our divinity not as power to be worshipped, but as an anomalous energy signature to be analyzed, cataloged, and mined! It will tear the magic from our very cores and use it to fuel its endless expansion!"

The vision reached its peak, shifting to show a figure of shimmering silver metal, sitting on a giant black throne. Its body covered with red eyes, tendrils wildly flayed behind it. In its hand a pristine blue orb.

The images vanished as Ionia collapsed forward, spent, her form, her face now pale white, drained of all color. Sobs wracked her body. "It comes… It is already among the mortals, hidden in plain sight… It will kill everything. Everyone. And there will be no one left to even remember we were here."

The silence in the room was heavy, none of the gods knew how to take in whatever it was that they had just witnessed.

"Nonsense." Vitalis stated

"The Abyss is our enemy. It is the only enemy. Its greatest weapon is to undermine us with fear and discord, to make us doubt our own power and see threats in every shadow. It has clearly found a willing, fragile vessel in you, Ionia. To speak of a threat beyond it, a threat we have never perceived, is to divert our focus from the true war at our doorstep. We will not be swayed by the nightmares of a minor divinity." He continued now enraged at Ionia

He gestured with a hand, a dismissive flick. "Your fear is a weapon you have allowed to be turned against us. This audience is over. Leave us. Go to your temple, meditate upon your failures of insight, and do not return to the until you have found clarity and silence."

Sentinels of pure light manifested grabbing onto the flailing Ionia and dragging her out the chamber.

But the gods would soon learn that's Ionia's vision wasn't deceit nor was it dream, but reality and they would come to greatly regret this moment.