Cosmos Monster (1089 words)
My birth was uneventful if I can say so.
One moment I wasn't there and the next my body, mind and soul formed out of random wave of concentrated cosmic energy together with billions of others.
At first I was a bit wobbly in controlling my body, but I had the luck of acquiring a rather simple and useful form, different than quite a few of my siblings around me.
With a tumor shaped core to which are attached three thin almost thread like tentacles and a single four jointed arm with a two fingered hand I had great dexterity, but the most important things were the presence of a somewhat malformed eyeball at the tip of one of my thread like tentacles and the teethless mouth near my arm.
The eye allows me to perceive my surroundings which, if my observation is accurate, is quite the privilege as I have yet to spot more than ten of my siblings that have any kind of sensory organ.
As for my mouth, well, from the inherited knowledge of my race eating things is pretty much our entire deal, so having no mouth would devoid me of my greatest strength.
Looking around with my one eye I soon spot one of my unfortunate siblings who possessed whether sensory organs nor a mouth and was slowly floating in my direction.
Carefully I stretch out the two eyeless thread tentacles and two fingered arm in my possession in the direction of my incoming kind.
The unlucky fella consists out of multiple handless arms and legs connected to each other and I fail to spot anything resembling a torso or even core as the limbs are sprouting out of each other like mangled mess.
It took a while but ultimately I manage to wrap my tentacles around his chaotic moving limbs and pull him close enough for my hand to grab him.
With no claws, teeth or strength to reduce my first meal into smaller bits to fit into my mouth I had no other choice but to simply shove one hand or footless limb into the opening which is my mouth and wait.
Luckily my kind does not require something like a digestive system, a mouth is more than enough, we don't even require teeth as I now realize.
Slimy dark-red and skinless flesh melts of deformed bones inside my mouth and gets dissolved into the purest kind of energy which spread out through my entire body, causing me to feel extremely energetic.
A few more seconds and the bone joined the flesh and made space for more limbs to enter my mouth.
With how chaotically the limbs of my victim are placed he could do nothing without blocking himself with his own limbs except waiting for me to finish eating him.
Swinging around my one still free tentacle with the eye at its tip I confirm that none of my other siblings are close enough to be a possible threat before focusing onto the energy swirling around my every cell which I gained from eating part of my prey.
After a quick peek at the information inside my mind I gained a basic understanding of what I could do with this energy and promptly went to work.
The energy previously evenly distributed through out my entire body now starts to gather into my two eyeless tentacles warped around my wiggling prey.
Once there I give a mental command and watch through my one eye how the thread thin tentacles start to bulge and expand.
Each second my two limbs become thicker and stronger, sadly this change burnt through my accumulated energy almost immediately, but I still had more than half of my prey left so that shouldn't be much of a problem.
Using my now stronger tentacles I start to rip and break some of the weaker appendages of my prey off and throw them into my teethless mouth to be digested
I keep a firm grip on my sibling with my two fingered hand while slowly dismembering him with my two tentacles into pieces better fit for my mouth.
Most of the energy gained form this feast went into elongating and strengthening my tentacles while a small part expanded the size of my mouth to fit in more food which increased the speed at which I could digest my prey and gain energy to future strengthen myself.
As an after though I invest a miniscule amount of the energy to grow three more tentacles on which I plan to add eyeballs later on, but it wasn't urgent at the moment.
Time was hard to impossible to keep track in this place where creation meets destruction almost every second and stars and suns appear and disappear in the blink of an eye, not that I had the eyelids to blink but that's not the point.
The last piece of my prey enters my mouth while still wiggling, proving the tenaciousness of my race.
Without anything to eat I once again scan my surroundings for prey and soon find one that would come into reach in short while.
Concentrating on my target I inspect the tumorous growth of short tentacles, eyeballs and three clawed feet and come to the conclusion that while it was dangerous to attack it with the presence of claws on its limbs the lack of a mouth made it practically impossible for it to kill me.
Even when it shredded me to pieces, I would most likely survive, without being dissolved into pure energy my race was ridiculously hard to kill completely.
Still, I have to be careful, if he somehow manages to completely destroy my mouth, I will no longer be able to consume and gain energy to alter my body.
I'm not sure how good my regeneration is, maybe I'm able to sacrifice parts of my body to regenerate my mouth, but honestly, I don't really want to find out right now.
No matter, the threat is there so maybe keeping a emergency stash of energy to repair my mouth in case of extensive damage is not a bad idea.
Discarding my musing for my single eye meets the tens of my prey.
Short and useless tentacles grow out of the mass of fused together eyeballs like hair while the three feet on way to short legs already claw in my direction.
The flesh, or skin, of this one was a sickly green with yellow boils near the places where the different parts of the creature connect.